A world called ocean, p.20
A World Called Ocean, page 20
But not if she stood half a chance of collapsing from exhaustion halfway through an interview.
She stripped off her sodden salt-stained clothes and dried herself off with the edge of the bedspread. It didn’t seem the politest thing to do, but manners weren’t big on her agenda right now. She crawled naked between the sheets. Her head touched the pillow and she fell instantly into a long, dreamless, peaceful sleep, like a sleep of the dead.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She woke in darkness, in the same position she had fallen asleep in. She watched the night sky through the unshuttered windows, the undersides of the clouds ablaze with the approaching dawn. She wondered how long she’d been sleeping.
She lay still for a while, not moving, savouring the comfort of the bed, the languid and warm sea breeze that drifted through an open window. After some more time had passed she sat up and looked around her.
Someone had been here while she was sleeping. A fresh suit of clothes had been laid out for her on a low stool, standard Oceanic wear, for a woman. Long floor-length skirt, a blue blouse made out of a material that felt a little like cotton. Her own clothes were gone. She would have preferred trousers, but the clothes were clean and pressed and she wasn’t in any mood to argue.
She pushed the sheets back and examined her body. She had a huge bruise down one side, all the way from her right breast to her hip, where she had hit the Sligo Ship’s tentacle falling from the rope. She had smaller but equally ugly bruises and scars on her elbows, knees and hands. The small of her back hurt if she twisted around too much.
She didn’t look good, not at all. If she’d been entertaining a lover, she’d have probably insisted on keeping the lights off.
If she’d wanted one, they’d have run a mile if they’d seen her looking anything like this. The thought made her smile, and even the smile hurt. She’d been lucky, very lucky not to break any bones. Not ending up with a fever after sitting in an open dinghy in the middle of the ocean in soaking wet clothes was a small miracle in itself.
She dropped back onto the bed again and wondered where Maquina was, how long she had been asleep, what was happening. Fatigue was starting to pull at her again; she fought it for a while but then she realised she didn’t really give a damn. She lay her head on the pillow and listened to the distant sounds of people chattering and laughing somewhere far below the tower until, again, she fell asleep.
When she woke for the second time it was daylight again, and she realised she had slept through until the next day. She sat up, feeling groggy from too much sleep and very, very hungry. She was sure she’d never slept so long in her entire life. The clothes were on their stool. Still no sign of her own.
She got out of bed slowly, savouring the ache of her bruises. The pain hadn’t lessened any. Fortunately, whoever had provided the clothes had now also provided a bowl of water for washing, a bar of rough soap, towels, and some crustacean shell with long, hard tines that, she decided, might have been intended for combing.
No showers on Ocean, she thought. Nosirree. Something else for her to miss. A life on the ocean wave. If there had been a shower anywhere within a couple of hundred kilometres, for all she cared the Oceanics could have shoved their delicately balanced culture up their collective ass.
It took her time to work up a lather with the soap. She washed herself carefully, feeling the sting of the water on her bruised flesh. It didn’t make her feel any better, but at least she was cleaner. She dried herself off and put on the clothes.
No mirror. She tried to catch her reflection in the bowl of soapy water. What she saw didn’t look too horrendous. She hoped.
The door opened. She realised for the first time that the room had a door rather than a curtain. Maybe it was the Oceanic equivalent of a luxury apartment. A woman entered, who somehow reminded her of Amanda without actually looking anything like her.
“I see you’re awake,” said the woman. “Are the clothes to your liking?”
“They’re fine, thanks,” she replied. She had washed her hair and made a fairly unsuccessful attempt to comb it with the shell. She’d managed to tie it into some kind of loose bundle behind her head, but it was tangled beyond repair.
“Do you have any scissors? And a mirror?” Alis asked the woman.
“Certainly.” She disappeared without another word and came back five minutes later. She handed them to Alis with a slightly worried expression.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to do myself any harm,” she said with a friendly smile. The woman looked relieved, then left her on her own again.
She leaned the mirror against a pillow and studied herself properly for the first time. She looked like shit. Still, it wasn’t like there was a huge amount she could do about it.
Her hair, despite its washing, hung in long greasy braids. She took the scissors and started cutting at it until it was curling just past her ears. She gathered the cropped hair into a pile and put it beside the water bowl and washed what she had left a second time, pulling the remaining knots out of it.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror again. Could be worse, she thought. She’d never really had her hair short before. Her head felt lighter. Hell, she thought it made her look younger.
She put on a pair of sandals that had been provided with the clothes and stepped outside the door. The deck of the Ship stretched out below and before her and she felt like a queen, surveying some fantasy land from a mountain castle. The stairs that led to the entrance to her quarters wound down and out of sight, only a light wooden handrail between her and the long drop to the streets below. A young quarter’s guard came to attention outside the door and stood, looking like he was waiting for her to do something.
“Take me to Maquina,” she said to him, a little more imperiously than she’d really intended.
Chapter Thirty
It took another five days to get to Leviathan’s Fall. During that time, she found there were limitations on her liberty, despite what Maquina had told her. She was treated well enough—by Oceanic standards, she was in the lap of luxury—but the feeling that she was a prisoner began to gain dominance in her mind.
Nothing was overtly stated; but every request to go to the Ship’s radio room were politely turned down. Or rather, they were graciously received, but nothing was ever done. She was even allowed to walk the streets of the floating city, but only with four liveried guards, ‘for her own protection’. Always the same four men, but not of the usual variety; she was told this by Mary, the woman who had first brought her fresh clothes.
Mary, like Amanda, was an indentured servant, and had been temporarily ‘assigned’ to Alis. It made Alis uncomfortable to have a servant of any kind. But, whatever her reservations, she found Mary to be friendly and easy to talk to. Mary told her the guards who kept watch over her had been a ‘gift’ to Maquina from the Ship’s Captain. Alis had tried speaking to them and found them polite but untalkative. It didn’t take long to figure out she wasn’t going to get any information from them.
She stayed in the same room high above the streets and tried to enjoy its relative luxury, but she grew bored, despite herself. She was coming to miss all the hi-tech entertainment’s of Earth she’d somehow convinced herself she’d be so much better without. Worse, she missed her friends back home.
It turned out the Ship had an extensive library of books of the paper and ink variety. She asked to see some, and after only a few hours two men carrying crates came wheezing into the tower, led by one of the guards, who watched silently as they dumped piles of volumes at her feet. The Ship, it seemed, had thousands of books, many so old they looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch. She was surprised how many of the books—many of them historical volumes, as she’d requested—were antiques, brought from Earth during the first wave of colonisation.
What time wasn’t taken up flicking through these dusty tracts was spent wandering the streets of the Free City, her four-man shadow always beside or just behind her. She saw little of Maquina and wondered what the hell he was up to. Sometimes she wondered what had become of Amanda. Short of jumping in the sea and trying to swim back to the islands, she couldn’t think of any way to get word back.
While she’d been sleeping through most of her first day on the Unity Ship, it had docked with the Sligo Ship she’d only just escaped from. Out of the few meagre snippets of information she had managed to prise out of her guards, she learned that many of the traders and civilians crossing over had been extensively searched in case the Blackrobe or anyone else tried to sneak across.
She forced herself to consider the possibility that Maquina had been right to keep her locked away for so much of the time. If the Blackrobe had managed to get across to the Unity Ship, he might well have found out her present location.
Still. If that was the case, it didn’t explain why Maquina was absent, conveniently unable to provide her with any adequate explanations of what was going on..
Even then, what could the Blackrobe have done, assuming he was alone? And by the time they all reached Leviathan’s Fall? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. There was too much she didn’t understand. Too many unanswered questions.
* * *
It would have been good to have watched the docking from such a high vantage point. Still, the next day she’d seen heavy crates being dragged by the omnipresent Clydesdales down into the sub-deck warehouses, and wondered what they contained. One of the crates had slipped from its cart in a street below, and she’d seen silvery light reflected from something large and metallic.
Mary nodded matter of factly when she asked her about the crates.. “Flyers, for the Cull,” she said.
The Cull. That sounded ominous. She wondered just what they were thinking of culling. And Flyers? She’d gotten used to the Ship’s mediaeval level of technology. It had to be some kind of offworld import. Unless they were manufacturing aeroplanes out of some local material, which she couldn’t rule out, especially if they were unpowered gliders. She had a brief fantasy of stealing one and flying away.
But then, Leviathan’s Fall started to drift over the horizon and captured her attention. Even from this distance, and especially from so high up, she could see how plainly, monstrously huge the whole thing was.
Leviathan’s Fall was a floating nightmare of a metropolis. As her last day on board the Ship passed, it expanded to fill the horizon. She tried to count how many Ships she could see directly in front of her, but they were as yet too far away to be easily distinguished from each other.
Dozens, possibly hundreds of Ships, all linked together into some vast, floating hypercommunity.
Mary became friendlier with her, told her stories. Alis guessed most of it was unsubstantiated rumour, but some of it gelled with what Straven had told her. Apparently another Ship had disappeared since she had left St Brubaker. It had been near the south pole this time, in the cold, dark regions.
The sea was vast and deep, but even so it seemed impossible it could swallow entire floating cities and leave virtually no trace. Mary told her this time there were a few—very few—eyewitness reports, but how to know what was true, and what was lies?
Alis noted the look on the other woman’s face when she related these details to her, a combination of fascination and horror. It wasn’t an easy thing to think about. The popular belief was that something was happening to the Ships, something that affected all of them. It happened without rhyme or reason. It could happen anywhere, anytime. Even here.
No wonder these people were panicking. They had no idea if the homes they had lived on for generations might decide to vanish into thin air overnight. Some of the supposed eyewitnesses said they’d seen Ships simply sink out of sight, but others claimed Ceti starships had fallen out of the clouds and destroyed the Ship with thunderbolts.
Another version had Leviathans rising from the deep to swallow the Ship whole. This notion Alis found a little hard to take, but she remembered that vast form shifting under the Sligo Ship, and she didn’t sleep any easier for it.
As Mary grew more communicative she tried to recruit her as an ally, but she seemed a lot more content in her position in life than Amanda had, and Alis’s tentative overtures were rejected. And on their last day on the Ship, Maquina finally came to talk to her.
He looked a lot better than he had the last time she’d seen him. He swept into the tower room, the four-man guard just visible outside the door.
“Alis,” he said warmly, then frowned. “Your hair—?”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, hearing the sarcasm in her voice. “Don’t you like it?”
He seemed to be struggling for an answer. “I … it’s different. It makes you stand out, doesn’t it? I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”
“They won’t be looking for a short-haired woman though, will they?”
He stared at her, tight-lipped. “No, I suppose not. You look much healthier. I think the past few days of rest has been very good for the both of us.”
“I think it has. It’s been nice to have those four guards following me everywhere, too. Makes me feel protected,” she said, deadpan.
“Agents of the Sacred Fleet are everywhere, Alis,” he said.
“So you keep telling me.”
He walked over to the broad windows and pushed open a shutter, stared out across the rooftops and bridges. “Magnificent view,” he said, and turned to her. “You’re a valued guest here, Alis. I’m sure you’ve come to appreciate that.”
She wondered what he meant by that, but decided to let it pass. “If I’m such a valued guest, perhaps you can tell me why I’m under virtual house arrest.”
He turned around, surprise written on his face. “What are you talking about? You’ve been free to go where you like.”
“Then why can’t I send out messages from the radio room here?”
“The radio room is malfunctioning,” he said smoothly. “The required replacement parts are only available on Leviathan’s Fall. I’m sure you’ll be able to communicate with your superiors once we get to our destination.”
“I see.” He was too good an actor for her to be sure if he was lying or not. She felt like she was caught up in some game where neither of them said what they really meant. She’d tried to guess at his real motivations and failed. Some deep inner sense railed in his presence, saying something’s wrong, something’s wrong.
“And once we reach Leviathan’s Fall, we meet this—person, who you say knows where my sister is.”
He nodded. “Precisely. Jonathan Van Iendos, of the Fleet Van Iendos.”
She sighed. “You know, not long after I arrived on Ocean, somebody told me that the rate of disappearance of Ships was on the increase.”
He eyed her warily. “And?”
“They told me that the Ship my sister was on disappeared.” Which was only half-true, she thought. She might have been on that Ship. Or she might have made it to another Ship.
Where, it had been implied, she may have been killed for her troubles.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said slowly.
“Oh well,” she said casually. “I’d thought you might, what with all this highly sensitive information you’ve been keeping back from me. All these details that are going to become clear as soon as we get wherever the hell it is we’re supposed to get to.”
He reddened, looked angry. “You’re playing games with me,” he said, in a low voice. She saw something murderous in his eyes that made her look away. It reminded her of the way the Blackrobes had looked at her.
“I have risked my life many times, for others as well as for you,” he said, stabbing a finger in her direction. “I didn’t need to bring you this far, I didn’t have to save your life when the Priest would rather have skewered you while you slept. Remember that, Alis. Without me, you would have been dead within hours, and no-one would ever know where you had gone or what had happened to you.”
For the first time she wondered if he was capable of killing her. She’d beaten him once before, but she didn’t think he was the type to do his own dirty work. He’d get somebody else to do it, someone like his personal guards waiting outside. For a moment the veneer had cracked, and something ugly had peered through.
“I just don’t like not knowing what’s happening,” she said defensively.
“All our—your questions will be answered soon,” he said, in a reassuring tone. “Within the next day, perhaps. Assuming everything’s gone right, Van Iendos should be waiting for us when we arrive. It’s reasonable to assume he’ll have word from your sister. We only have to arrange a time and place for our meeting.”
She nodded, suddenly wanting him to be gone. “Fine,” she said, turning away. “I need to rest, Maquina. I’d appreciate some time alone.”
He frowned at her curt dismissal, but wisely said nothing, and left.
* * *
She slept lightly that night, and was woken by Mary entering the room a short time after dawn. Alis sat up in bed, yawning. Mary had brought her breakfast.
“He wants you ready within the hour,” said Mary, with a professional smile. “You’ll be departing for Leviathan’s Fall.”
After Mary had gone, Alis dressed and pulled open the shutters, savouring the cool morning breeze that wafted into the room after the long, warm night. The Ship was moving into a docking position with Leviathan’s Fall, and they were close enough she could make out its architecture in more detail.
She remembered what she had read about Leviathan’s Fall in the past few days. It was the diametrical opposite to the ordered communities of the islands. Where they were organised and highly regulated, Leviathan’s Fall had more in common with old-style capitalism gone mad.
From her research she found the ‘Fall was compromised of between fifty to eighty Ships, some Ships on the outer layers being relatively temporary members of the whole, staying for months or even years, before leaving again and being replaced in turn. The numbers tended to increase or decrease according to the seasons.
She stripped off her sodden salt-stained clothes and dried herself off with the edge of the bedspread. It didn’t seem the politest thing to do, but manners weren’t big on her agenda right now. She crawled naked between the sheets. Her head touched the pillow and she fell instantly into a long, dreamless, peaceful sleep, like a sleep of the dead.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She woke in darkness, in the same position she had fallen asleep in. She watched the night sky through the unshuttered windows, the undersides of the clouds ablaze with the approaching dawn. She wondered how long she’d been sleeping.
She lay still for a while, not moving, savouring the comfort of the bed, the languid and warm sea breeze that drifted through an open window. After some more time had passed she sat up and looked around her.
Someone had been here while she was sleeping. A fresh suit of clothes had been laid out for her on a low stool, standard Oceanic wear, for a woman. Long floor-length skirt, a blue blouse made out of a material that felt a little like cotton. Her own clothes were gone. She would have preferred trousers, but the clothes were clean and pressed and she wasn’t in any mood to argue.
She pushed the sheets back and examined her body. She had a huge bruise down one side, all the way from her right breast to her hip, where she had hit the Sligo Ship’s tentacle falling from the rope. She had smaller but equally ugly bruises and scars on her elbows, knees and hands. The small of her back hurt if she twisted around too much.
She didn’t look good, not at all. If she’d been entertaining a lover, she’d have probably insisted on keeping the lights off.
If she’d wanted one, they’d have run a mile if they’d seen her looking anything like this. The thought made her smile, and even the smile hurt. She’d been lucky, very lucky not to break any bones. Not ending up with a fever after sitting in an open dinghy in the middle of the ocean in soaking wet clothes was a small miracle in itself.
She dropped back onto the bed again and wondered where Maquina was, how long she had been asleep, what was happening. Fatigue was starting to pull at her again; she fought it for a while but then she realised she didn’t really give a damn. She lay her head on the pillow and listened to the distant sounds of people chattering and laughing somewhere far below the tower until, again, she fell asleep.
When she woke for the second time it was daylight again, and she realised she had slept through until the next day. She sat up, feeling groggy from too much sleep and very, very hungry. She was sure she’d never slept so long in her entire life. The clothes were on their stool. Still no sign of her own.
She got out of bed slowly, savouring the ache of her bruises. The pain hadn’t lessened any. Fortunately, whoever had provided the clothes had now also provided a bowl of water for washing, a bar of rough soap, towels, and some crustacean shell with long, hard tines that, she decided, might have been intended for combing.
No showers on Ocean, she thought. Nosirree. Something else for her to miss. A life on the ocean wave. If there had been a shower anywhere within a couple of hundred kilometres, for all she cared the Oceanics could have shoved their delicately balanced culture up their collective ass.
It took her time to work up a lather with the soap. She washed herself carefully, feeling the sting of the water on her bruised flesh. It didn’t make her feel any better, but at least she was cleaner. She dried herself off and put on the clothes.
No mirror. She tried to catch her reflection in the bowl of soapy water. What she saw didn’t look too horrendous. She hoped.
The door opened. She realised for the first time that the room had a door rather than a curtain. Maybe it was the Oceanic equivalent of a luxury apartment. A woman entered, who somehow reminded her of Amanda without actually looking anything like her.
“I see you’re awake,” said the woman. “Are the clothes to your liking?”
“They’re fine, thanks,” she replied. She had washed her hair and made a fairly unsuccessful attempt to comb it with the shell. She’d managed to tie it into some kind of loose bundle behind her head, but it was tangled beyond repair.
“Do you have any scissors? And a mirror?” Alis asked the woman.
“Certainly.” She disappeared without another word and came back five minutes later. She handed them to Alis with a slightly worried expression.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to do myself any harm,” she said with a friendly smile. The woman looked relieved, then left her on her own again.
She leaned the mirror against a pillow and studied herself properly for the first time. She looked like shit. Still, it wasn’t like there was a huge amount she could do about it.
Her hair, despite its washing, hung in long greasy braids. She took the scissors and started cutting at it until it was curling just past her ears. She gathered the cropped hair into a pile and put it beside the water bowl and washed what she had left a second time, pulling the remaining knots out of it.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror again. Could be worse, she thought. She’d never really had her hair short before. Her head felt lighter. Hell, she thought it made her look younger.
She put on a pair of sandals that had been provided with the clothes and stepped outside the door. The deck of the Ship stretched out below and before her and she felt like a queen, surveying some fantasy land from a mountain castle. The stairs that led to the entrance to her quarters wound down and out of sight, only a light wooden handrail between her and the long drop to the streets below. A young quarter’s guard came to attention outside the door and stood, looking like he was waiting for her to do something.
“Take me to Maquina,” she said to him, a little more imperiously than she’d really intended.
Chapter Thirty
It took another five days to get to Leviathan’s Fall. During that time, she found there were limitations on her liberty, despite what Maquina had told her. She was treated well enough—by Oceanic standards, she was in the lap of luxury—but the feeling that she was a prisoner began to gain dominance in her mind.
Nothing was overtly stated; but every request to go to the Ship’s radio room were politely turned down. Or rather, they were graciously received, but nothing was ever done. She was even allowed to walk the streets of the floating city, but only with four liveried guards, ‘for her own protection’. Always the same four men, but not of the usual variety; she was told this by Mary, the woman who had first brought her fresh clothes.
Mary, like Amanda, was an indentured servant, and had been temporarily ‘assigned’ to Alis. It made Alis uncomfortable to have a servant of any kind. But, whatever her reservations, she found Mary to be friendly and easy to talk to. Mary told her the guards who kept watch over her had been a ‘gift’ to Maquina from the Ship’s Captain. Alis had tried speaking to them and found them polite but untalkative. It didn’t take long to figure out she wasn’t going to get any information from them.
She stayed in the same room high above the streets and tried to enjoy its relative luxury, but she grew bored, despite herself. She was coming to miss all the hi-tech entertainment’s of Earth she’d somehow convinced herself she’d be so much better without. Worse, she missed her friends back home.
It turned out the Ship had an extensive library of books of the paper and ink variety. She asked to see some, and after only a few hours two men carrying crates came wheezing into the tower, led by one of the guards, who watched silently as they dumped piles of volumes at her feet. The Ship, it seemed, had thousands of books, many so old they looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch. She was surprised how many of the books—many of them historical volumes, as she’d requested—were antiques, brought from Earth during the first wave of colonisation.
What time wasn’t taken up flicking through these dusty tracts was spent wandering the streets of the Free City, her four-man shadow always beside or just behind her. She saw little of Maquina and wondered what the hell he was up to. Sometimes she wondered what had become of Amanda. Short of jumping in the sea and trying to swim back to the islands, she couldn’t think of any way to get word back.
While she’d been sleeping through most of her first day on the Unity Ship, it had docked with the Sligo Ship she’d only just escaped from. Out of the few meagre snippets of information she had managed to prise out of her guards, she learned that many of the traders and civilians crossing over had been extensively searched in case the Blackrobe or anyone else tried to sneak across.
She forced herself to consider the possibility that Maquina had been right to keep her locked away for so much of the time. If the Blackrobe had managed to get across to the Unity Ship, he might well have found out her present location.
Still. If that was the case, it didn’t explain why Maquina was absent, conveniently unable to provide her with any adequate explanations of what was going on..
Even then, what could the Blackrobe have done, assuming he was alone? And by the time they all reached Leviathan’s Fall? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. There was too much she didn’t understand. Too many unanswered questions.
* * *
It would have been good to have watched the docking from such a high vantage point. Still, the next day she’d seen heavy crates being dragged by the omnipresent Clydesdales down into the sub-deck warehouses, and wondered what they contained. One of the crates had slipped from its cart in a street below, and she’d seen silvery light reflected from something large and metallic.
Mary nodded matter of factly when she asked her about the crates.. “Flyers, for the Cull,” she said.
The Cull. That sounded ominous. She wondered just what they were thinking of culling. And Flyers? She’d gotten used to the Ship’s mediaeval level of technology. It had to be some kind of offworld import. Unless they were manufacturing aeroplanes out of some local material, which she couldn’t rule out, especially if they were unpowered gliders. She had a brief fantasy of stealing one and flying away.
But then, Leviathan’s Fall started to drift over the horizon and captured her attention. Even from this distance, and especially from so high up, she could see how plainly, monstrously huge the whole thing was.
Leviathan’s Fall was a floating nightmare of a metropolis. As her last day on board the Ship passed, it expanded to fill the horizon. She tried to count how many Ships she could see directly in front of her, but they were as yet too far away to be easily distinguished from each other.
Dozens, possibly hundreds of Ships, all linked together into some vast, floating hypercommunity.
Mary became friendlier with her, told her stories. Alis guessed most of it was unsubstantiated rumour, but some of it gelled with what Straven had told her. Apparently another Ship had disappeared since she had left St Brubaker. It had been near the south pole this time, in the cold, dark regions.
The sea was vast and deep, but even so it seemed impossible it could swallow entire floating cities and leave virtually no trace. Mary told her this time there were a few—very few—eyewitness reports, but how to know what was true, and what was lies?
Alis noted the look on the other woman’s face when she related these details to her, a combination of fascination and horror. It wasn’t an easy thing to think about. The popular belief was that something was happening to the Ships, something that affected all of them. It happened without rhyme or reason. It could happen anywhere, anytime. Even here.
No wonder these people were panicking. They had no idea if the homes they had lived on for generations might decide to vanish into thin air overnight. Some of the supposed eyewitnesses said they’d seen Ships simply sink out of sight, but others claimed Ceti starships had fallen out of the clouds and destroyed the Ship with thunderbolts.
Another version had Leviathans rising from the deep to swallow the Ship whole. This notion Alis found a little hard to take, but she remembered that vast form shifting under the Sligo Ship, and she didn’t sleep any easier for it.
As Mary grew more communicative she tried to recruit her as an ally, but she seemed a lot more content in her position in life than Amanda had, and Alis’s tentative overtures were rejected. And on their last day on the Ship, Maquina finally came to talk to her.
He looked a lot better than he had the last time she’d seen him. He swept into the tower room, the four-man guard just visible outside the door.
“Alis,” he said warmly, then frowned. “Your hair—?”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, hearing the sarcasm in her voice. “Don’t you like it?”
He seemed to be struggling for an answer. “I … it’s different. It makes you stand out, doesn’t it? I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”
“They won’t be looking for a short-haired woman though, will they?”
He stared at her, tight-lipped. “No, I suppose not. You look much healthier. I think the past few days of rest has been very good for the both of us.”
“I think it has. It’s been nice to have those four guards following me everywhere, too. Makes me feel protected,” she said, deadpan.
“Agents of the Sacred Fleet are everywhere, Alis,” he said.
“So you keep telling me.”
He walked over to the broad windows and pushed open a shutter, stared out across the rooftops and bridges. “Magnificent view,” he said, and turned to her. “You’re a valued guest here, Alis. I’m sure you’ve come to appreciate that.”
She wondered what he meant by that, but decided to let it pass. “If I’m such a valued guest, perhaps you can tell me why I’m under virtual house arrest.”
He turned around, surprise written on his face. “What are you talking about? You’ve been free to go where you like.”
“Then why can’t I send out messages from the radio room here?”
“The radio room is malfunctioning,” he said smoothly. “The required replacement parts are only available on Leviathan’s Fall. I’m sure you’ll be able to communicate with your superiors once we get to our destination.”
“I see.” He was too good an actor for her to be sure if he was lying or not. She felt like she was caught up in some game where neither of them said what they really meant. She’d tried to guess at his real motivations and failed. Some deep inner sense railed in his presence, saying something’s wrong, something’s wrong.
“And once we reach Leviathan’s Fall, we meet this—person, who you say knows where my sister is.”
He nodded. “Precisely. Jonathan Van Iendos, of the Fleet Van Iendos.”
She sighed. “You know, not long after I arrived on Ocean, somebody told me that the rate of disappearance of Ships was on the increase.”
He eyed her warily. “And?”
“They told me that the Ship my sister was on disappeared.” Which was only half-true, she thought. She might have been on that Ship. Or she might have made it to another Ship.
Where, it had been implied, she may have been killed for her troubles.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said slowly.
“Oh well,” she said casually. “I’d thought you might, what with all this highly sensitive information you’ve been keeping back from me. All these details that are going to become clear as soon as we get wherever the hell it is we’re supposed to get to.”
He reddened, looked angry. “You’re playing games with me,” he said, in a low voice. She saw something murderous in his eyes that made her look away. It reminded her of the way the Blackrobes had looked at her.
“I have risked my life many times, for others as well as for you,” he said, stabbing a finger in her direction. “I didn’t need to bring you this far, I didn’t have to save your life when the Priest would rather have skewered you while you slept. Remember that, Alis. Without me, you would have been dead within hours, and no-one would ever know where you had gone or what had happened to you.”
For the first time she wondered if he was capable of killing her. She’d beaten him once before, but she didn’t think he was the type to do his own dirty work. He’d get somebody else to do it, someone like his personal guards waiting outside. For a moment the veneer had cracked, and something ugly had peered through.
“I just don’t like not knowing what’s happening,” she said defensively.
“All our—your questions will be answered soon,” he said, in a reassuring tone. “Within the next day, perhaps. Assuming everything’s gone right, Van Iendos should be waiting for us when we arrive. It’s reasonable to assume he’ll have word from your sister. We only have to arrange a time and place for our meeting.”
She nodded, suddenly wanting him to be gone. “Fine,” she said, turning away. “I need to rest, Maquina. I’d appreciate some time alone.”
He frowned at her curt dismissal, but wisely said nothing, and left.
* * *
She slept lightly that night, and was woken by Mary entering the room a short time after dawn. Alis sat up in bed, yawning. Mary had brought her breakfast.
“He wants you ready within the hour,” said Mary, with a professional smile. “You’ll be departing for Leviathan’s Fall.”
After Mary had gone, Alis dressed and pulled open the shutters, savouring the cool morning breeze that wafted into the room after the long, warm night. The Ship was moving into a docking position with Leviathan’s Fall, and they were close enough she could make out its architecture in more detail.
She remembered what she had read about Leviathan’s Fall in the past few days. It was the diametrical opposite to the ordered communities of the islands. Where they were organised and highly regulated, Leviathan’s Fall had more in common with old-style capitalism gone mad.
From her research she found the ‘Fall was compromised of between fifty to eighty Ships, some Ships on the outer layers being relatively temporary members of the whole, staying for months or even years, before leaving again and being replaced in turn. The numbers tended to increase or decrease according to the seasons.
