E. F. Montvelt walked towards the passengers discharging onto the dockside.
‘Master Jonas?’ he inquired. ‘Master Jonas?’
No one seemed bothered to acknowledge him.
‘Where’s your master?’ he asked the crewman with the cable. The man shrugged indifferently. Annoyed at his manner, E. F. Montvelt tapped the badges and buttons of guild, of rank and of Munitorum service that he wore on the left breast of his juniper coat.
‘You’re on my shore now!’ he told the listless fellow.
‘And glad of it,’ the man answered, shifting the heavy coil to his other shoulder.
‘Where is the master of this vessel?’ E. F. Montvelt asked.
‘The lady there, she asked him to check upon her cargoes personal,’ the man replied, nodding towards the widow with the scandalous nape.
‘Mamzel?’ E. F. Montvelt called as he approached her. ‘Begging your pardon, but would you know where the shipmaster is to be found?’
‘Oh dear, he is dead,’ the lady answered. Her voice was small, but perfectly clear, and rounded with a distant accent. There was a wobble to it too, as if she was fighting to contain her emotions.
‘He is dead?’
‘Indeed, most terribly,’ she agreed, with another catch in her voice.
‘But how?’ E. F. Montvelt asked.
‘Why, we were obliged to murder him when he would not cooperate with us,’ she said. E. F. Montvelt could not see her face through the fine mesh of the veil, but he felt her eyes fix upon him, registering his expression of disquiet.
‘What did you say, mamzel?’ he asked.
‘I cannot lie,’ said the veil. ‘I am sorry for it.’
‘Mamzel,’ said E. F. Montvelt, concerned by the rising strength of the catch in her voice, ‘are you quite well?’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I cannot speak a lie. Upon my soul, it is my great burden. I am compelled to tell each and every truth, even the dirty ones.’
‘Perhaps you should sit down?’ E. F. Montvelt suggested.
‘My dear sister, have you over-wrought yourself again?’
The tall man in the long, beige coat appeared at the widow’s side, and was placing a solicitous hand on her sleeve. His hands were gloved.
‘This gentleman asked me about the shipmaster,’ the lady said.
The man looked at E. F. Montvelt. Like the widow, his voice was spiced by a distant accent.
‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘My sister is rather troubled, and you must excuse her. Grief has terribly affected her mind.’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ E. F. Montvelt responded earnestly. ‘It was not my intention to distress her.’
‘I did not for a moment presume it was, sir,’ the man said. He was holding his sister’s arm quite tightly, as if she might otherwise slip her lines and fly away.
‘It is true, though,’ the lady said. ‘I cannot tell any lies. Not ever, anymore. It is quite beyond me to do so. This is the price I must pay. If I desire the truth, I must have all truths, so that only truth can spill out of my mouth and–’
‘Hush now, sister,’ the man said, ‘you will make yourself ill. Let me take you to a quiet place where you can gather your wits.’ He glanced at E. F. Montvelt. ‘Sir?’
‘There is a lounge in the disembarkation hall, there at the end of the slipway,’ said E. F. Montvelt, pointing.
‘You’re most kind,’ the man said. ‘The Lady Eyl appreciates your understanding. She does not know what she says.’
‘Well, that is apparent,’ said E. F. Montvelt. ‘I asked the whereabouts of the shipmaster, and she told me plainly that she had murdered him.’ He laughed. The man did not.
‘It is because I am witched!’ the widow protested.
‘The shipmaster went to hold sixteen aft, to attend to our baggage,’ the man said. ‘I believe you will find him there.’
‘I’m obliged to you,’ said Montvelt.
The man took his sister away. Montvelt went up the gangway and entered the ship. He cued the manifest list back onto the screen of his data-slate and scrolled down it. Lady Eyl. There she was, Lady Ulrike Serepa fon Eyl, of San Velabo, travelling with her brother Baltasar Eyl and a household party.
Still rather discomfited by his encounter with the damaged Lady Eyl, E. F. Montvelt descended into the bowels of the ancient packet ship. He wondered who she had lost. A husband, he felt. Perhaps another brother. Such things she had said. For a mind to be that torn and frayed by grief, well, it did not bear thinking about. The dead came back to Balhaut, and brought their ghosts with them, but the truly frightening apparitions were the souls destroyed by loss.
The underdecks of the Solace were quiet: dark halls, dark companionways, a current of heat against his face, dissipating from the drive vents, the bad odour of air breathed too many times, the sounds of hull fabric creaking and settling as commonplace orbital gravity replaced the distorting insanity of the Empyrean.
Caged lamps glowed soft yellow, their once-white shades stained brown by age. Oily condensation dripped from the pipes of the climate systems running along the ceiling. The Solace was clicking and settling and easing her bones, like the arthritic grand dame she was. E. F. Montvelt enjoyed the smells and sounds of a thoroughbred packet ship. He’d crewed one, the Ganymede Eleison, in his youth, serving three years as junior purser before his uncle’s influence secured him a shore-job at Highstation. The hollow echoes of footsteps on deck grilles, the low stoops of the bulkhead hatches, the scents of priming paint and grease and scrubbed air brought it all back.
Without needing to check the doorframe code markers, for the Solace’s layout matched the deck plan of all ships of her class, E. F. Montvelt found hold sixteen aft.
The air inside was full of vapour. The hold’s jaws were open, so that sunlight shone in, and a magnificent open drop down to ferociously white and snowy clouds was revealed through the cage floor of the stowage space. He stepped out onto the cage floor, Balhaut turning below him, and called out the shipmaster’s name.
No one answered.
Bulk containers were lashed along the cage, ready to be discharged by the servitor-handlers. Their certificates had been pasted to them, and their seals were intact. E. F. Montvelt called the shipmaster’s name again.
He took out his scanning wand, and flashed the nearest container to check that its certificate code matched the number on his dockets.
It did, but there was something odd. The wand had registered a temperature blip.
He put his hand against the container’s side, and then drew it away again sharply.
‘Something wrong?’ asked the man in the beige coat. He came down through the steam onto the cage floor, and approached the wharfinger.
‘These containers,’ E. F. Montvelt replied. ‘They are not what they seem, sir.’
‘How so?’
‘Trace heat,’ the wharfinger replied. ‘There is a mechanism here. These are not containers.’ He showed Baltasar Eyl the dial of his wand. ‘You see?’
‘I do.’
‘Test for yourself.’
The man pressed his gloved hand against the container’s side.
‘No, sir, take off your glove and do it,’ said E. F. Montvelt.
Baltasar Eyl peeled off his right glove. The hand that was revealed was so terribly marked by old scars that the sight of it made E. F. Montvelt baulk. Eyl saw his reaction.