Stryge jerked back, Jyp whistled and choked on it, and Mall ran her hands through her hair. ‘Faith, a pretty company to be keeping!’
‘Look, he was kind, whoever he was! He hid me from the cops – he showed me the way back, the Chorazin –he saved my hide! My mind, too, maybe – after that thing in the cemetery I thought I was going off my trolley! Maybe he was the answer to that call of yours –’
‘What thing?’ demanded the Stryge, but in nothing like his normal snarl. I thought I saw a flicker of real feeling cross the stonily malevolent mask; something I might have welcomed, if it hadn’t looked like fear. So I told him, and watched his face crumple. Jyp went ashen, and Mall, to my astonishment, sank to her haunches beside me and hugged me bruisingly hard.
‘The Baron!’ said Stryge with a high shaky cackle. ‘And Legba! The imbecile boy escapes the Baron, meets Legba and calls him a blind old man! As if he’d come to my call, hah!’
‘But who’s to say he didn’t?’ rebuked Jyp softly. ‘This – it’s taking a shape I feared. More at stake than just a raid into the Core – or a girl getting shanghaied – much, much more. There’s strong forces at play here, if the Invisibles are taking a hand.’
‘More than a hand!’ said Mall shrilly. ‘D’you not see? It’s sides they take – and when ever did they do thus? With Stephen here caught in the middle!’
Jyp clenched his fists. ‘And good or bad, they’re ill meddlers with men! Hoy, Mister Mate – what of the tug?’
‘None to be had!’ cried the breathless mate, scorning the plank and swinging himself aboard by the new mainstays. ‘There was three fired up – but two spiked overnight, a’ purpose! A mercy their boilers didn’t blow to blazes! And the last the Wolves took, with pistol’s point as fee! We’ll needs wait hours!’
Pierce threw down his hat and stamped upon it. ‘By Beelzebub’s burning balls! And miss the dawn? Never! Hands to the braces! We’ll after them under sail alone! We caught the bastards before and by hell’s thunders we’ll do it again, if it’s up Satan’s arsegut they flee us! Topmen aloft! Leap to it, rum – rotted whoreson bitch-spawn you be –’
The mate’s leathery face rumpled uneasily. ‘But cap’n – how’ll we know their course to follow? We’ve no way –’
‘Ah, but we have!’ said Mall grimly. ‘The Stryge may check it if he wills, but I doubt his divination will fare better. A contention’s in hand among the Invisibles, t’would seem. So where else would the Chorazin be bound in such case, but to the island that’s their home?’
Jyp smacked hand into palm. ‘That’s it! Well, skipper – for Hispaniola?’
‘Aye, set your course,’ muttered Pierce, the rage drained from him. ‘Hispaniola! Hayti! There’s a lee shore for the soul, a shoal of shadow all a-slather with blood and black arts. But if it must be, it must. Quartermaster, to the helm! And pray God that we are in time!’
Chapter Eight
The dark green walls loomed above us, brooding, impenetrable, seething beneath a thunderous sky. Emerald fire flashed from the swords as they rang together. Mine was swatted aside like an annoying fly; the broadsword sizzled by an inch from my left armpit. Somehow I parried, jumped back, lifted my guard again, gasping. Several cuts had opened, and I winced as the sweat ran into them. We circled each other, feinting. Mall grinned; it wasn’t the most reassuring sight. She was swaying hypnotically, like a cobra, picking her time and place to strike.
It’d been like that all the way from New Orleans, and I had the scars to prove it. Our frantic departure seemed to be paying off, at first. We fairly flew down that great river on the wings of the morning. Le Stryge claimed credit for the unexpectedly fresh wind in our sails, which went a long way to nullify the advantage of the Wolves’ steam tow; but I was more inclined to credit Jyp’s unfailing pilotage. I had the odd idea, watching him at the wheel, that that calm gaze of his was seeing through the veils of time and space, choosing some invisible thread of destiny and steering a straight course between its tortuous coils, sliding from one to another. I made the mistake of mentioning it to Mall as we snatched a bite of breakfast together on the foredeck.
‘Not so odd a fancy, indeed,’ was her reply. ‘Each one has his inborn qualities, ’tis thought; yet few live long enough to bring them to their fullest flower. Fast within the Hub, men like him are but clever navigators; yet out upon the Wheel they’ll soon learn to sight you on a star through every twist and turn of shifting time. Only here does the true power blossom from within the skill and the learning that are its swaddlings. You, my friend, you might be a mighty trader in time, perhaps; though you would needs first fill that void in you, feed your starved spirit that it may grow. ’Tis more than passion you lack. Men need a cause in living, lest others find it for them.’ She dunked the last crust of bread in her coffee – bowl and drained it to the grounds. ‘And, since we’re turned the idle philosopher, Stephen my lad, high time I kept my word and opened to you something of my own peculiar mystery. My lectures are curt, but my reasonings cut deep! Up, then, and a’guard!’
So my lessons began, in swordsmanship and in other things also, perhaps. Right from the start, from the stance, they were severely practical; we fenced with naked edge and unbarred point, which soon teaches you respect for what you’re messing with. At first, on our way downriver, Mall only marked each touch by landing light playful taps with the flat of her blade. It was almost a compliment when she began to deal out real stinging slaps.
By then we were at sea. We’d made such a quick passage I’d begun to hope we might find the black ship’s sails still in sight when we left the delta, or get her last heading from the tug as it returned. Instead we passed its smoking remains on a sandbank.
‘What do we do now?’ repeated Jyp disgustedly, when I told him there was nobody left alive in the wreck. ‘We’ll set a good swift course for Hispaniola, that’s what. But not the swiftest. We’ve got to overhaul the Wolves before they get there, if we can. There’ll be some help awaiting them, you can depend on that; help we may not like. So, all along the way we search. We search like hell!’
And so by day and night we beat back and forth along the course, sweeping as wide as we dared; by day, over an ocean of dazzling blue, a vast sphere of sapphire, it seemed, upon which nothing stirred save schools of dolphin racing to play in our bow-wave, and great sleeting shoals of flying fish. By night –
But what lay beneath our hull by night was a question I only asked once. Jyp gazed out into infinity, and smiled. ‘The seas east of the sun, west of the moon,’ he said quietly. ‘Between the Straits of the Night and the Sound of Morning they lie, beyond the Gates of Noon. The waves that break beneath charmed casements, beneath cloud – castle towers. There’s others might give you plainer answers, but I tell it you straight, you wouldn’t thank ’em. Some things’re best seen for yourself – and one day, maybe, if you’re in luck, you will.’
Which effectively silenced me. I never plucked up the nerve to ask anyone else. I was more than a little afraid what might happen if I couldn’t believe the answer. But I kept being reminded of what I’d seen once, on a lonely night-flight back from some joyless business in France. Then, our small plane climbed between two layers of cloud, the one beneath level and rolling like a steel – blue sea, the one above heavier, craggier, foreboding as grey granite; one lone slash of pallid orange defined a horizon that would otherwise have been lost in trackless infinity. If I’d looked down, looked longer, would I have glimpsed tall masts above those cloudcrests, broad sails gliding towards that last distant light?