The Choir Boats (24 page)

“Too dangerous,” said the ship’s captain. “Each crossing from
Sabo-soom to Karket-soom is a great risk.”

“The ships are too small,” said Noreous.

“Practically no cargo space,” added Reglum. “Guns and cannon
take up a great part of a tough ship’s capacity.”

“Fulgination is an unpredictable art,” said Dorentius, with pride
and sadness mixed. “Unacceptably erratic from a commercial point
of view.”

Sanford adopted a mild version of his “qualifying” tone, saying,
“Yet you seem to have commercial agents all over our world.”

“No, no,” said Noreous, his fingers making circles in the air to
keep time with his phrases. “I mean, yes, we have a network of
factors, like the Termuydens at the Cape and the Landemanns in
Hamburg. Salmius Nalmius orchestrates it all from London. Only
there aren’t so many as you make it out to be, not at all, perhaps
twenty families in all, families we Small Landers have known and
trusted for generations.”

Something gnawed at the back of Barnabas’s mind. “Have you a
factor in India then, or perhaps more than one?” he asked.

The officers looked at each other, shifted in their chairs, sent
side glances to Nexius. Nexius nodded almost imperceptibly to the
purser.

Noreous said, “Yes. One in Calcutta, and one in Bombay.”

“In Bombay,” asked Barnabas. “It is not a Khodja merchant
named — ”

“No,” said Noreous, tapping his fingers quickly. “No, but I have
read that you know our contact there all the same: a staunch friend
of Yount named Sitterjee.”

“Sitterjee!” exclaimed Barnabas and Sanford together. “Our
Parsee friend!”

“The same,” said Noreous.

Nexius rose to his feet and said, “You still have many questions,
Barnabas. Here, we officers know only some of your story and how
your story —
dassamirran —
connects with ours and with the key.
Reglum, tell Barnabas what we know from our orders.”

Reglum said, “Truly, we on the
Gallinule
know only what we have
seen in the dossier our commanders gave us. These are deep matters
beyond the thinking of any one man . . . or woman. The Learned Doctors
took an interest in you, Barnabas, long, long ago. Before you were even
born, in fact. It was your mother who first came to their attention.”

Barnabas opened his mouth, but no “beans and bacon” emanated.
At last he said, “My
mother
? I barely knew her. Your grandmother,
Sally. I’ve told you. She died when I was but a boy, eight years old.
Sally,
your
mother, my sister, never really knew our mother at all.
When she died — your grandmother — your mother and I were sent
to be bred up by my uncle, the Old McDoon.”

Reglum coughed lightly. “I apologize for this. It is intrusive, I
know, but we feel it best you know what we know. The better to help
you when you arrive with the key.”

Absentmindedly, Barnabas fished for the key in his pocket. “No,
it is acceptable,” said the London merchant. “I asked to know this.
But what a marvel to discover that strangers not even of this world,
my world, have known of me since my birth . . . knew my mother.”

“Your mother, sir,” said Reglum. “Born Belladonna Brownlee
in Edinburgh in the middle of the last century. The Brownlees
were
less
wealthy
than
the
McDoons
but
a
solid
respectable
family all the same. The Brownlees had been trading with the
Continent,
mostly
through
Amsterdam
and
Hamburg.
Their
main correspondents were, well, you can guess, members of the
Termuyden
and
Landemann
families.
Pure
happenstance,
a
coincidence or a gesture from God, interpret it however you wish.
Your mother, Belladonna, had an unusual reputation already by
the end of her childhood. According to the reports we have, she cut
a strange swath in Edinburgh society. Many people thought she
was a witch. I am sorry to put it in such crude terms.”

Sanford looked sharply at the Yountians and said, “Do not toy
with us, gentlemen! We have come too far for cruel tricks. And think
of what his niece must endure!”

Nexius stood up again. He bowed low, almost to the table, looking
like a bear trying ballet. “
Kumsi majirra sasal
,” he said. “We are
pained to give pain, and we beg your forgiveness. We are your sworn
friends. This we do for the key — and to get Tom back to you.”

Reglum continued, “Belladonna born Brownlee possessed a
strong desire to come to a place she did not know, and an ability
— deemed witchly — to create visions of that place. A natural
philosopher like myself, rejecting the concept of witchcraft, would
say, Barnabas, that your mother had an innate ability to ‘feel far’
the way an ansible does. There’s not much more to tell. Your mother
died a natural if premature death, a fever took her. The point is
that her gift is exceedingly rare and it can be passed to offspring.
The key can only be used by one with that gift, so reports from the
Landemanns and Termuydens about your mother naturally aroused
great interest among the Learned Doctors. I can only surmise that
they see the potential in you for your mother’s ‘far-feeling,’ and so
had the key sent to you.”

Getting to his feet, Barnabas said, “To speak here, with strangers,
of things that I have never spoken of with anyone is a matter beyond
my comprehension. My uncle would not speak to me of my mother,
his sister-in-law. He quashed all my enquiries in that direction.
Tonight you have told me far more than I have ever imagined. Pray
allow me to retire now: I must ponder all that you have said.”

The ship’s captain said, “Please, let us all to bed soon. Tomorrow
is our last day in Karket-soom — so Dorentius informs me. Let us
prepare with rest that we may not enjoy again for months to come.”

In her cabin, Sally considered the evening’s discoveries. Isaak
jumped up on the bed, walked around in a tightening circle and
flumped down in the crook of Sally’s arm. Sally said to the cat,
“Uncle Barnabas has more secrets than the crone who guards the
Well at the Edge of the World. Secrets he himself knew nothing
about . . . secret secrets. So, my grandmother was a far-dreamer. She
had the longing for that which is foreign and strange, ‘
was fremd und
seltsam ist
,’ as Fraulein Reimer says. Of course, the fraulein fits that
description herself: a Pietist from Hamburg who fell through . . . a
hole in the world. . . . Tom, where are you? What news I must share
with you. Our grandmother, a witch. Uncle Barnabas was in love.
I’m
in . . . love.”

An image of Tom came into her mind: Tom as a boy hunched over
a ledger book writing with a pen almost as long as his arm. He looked
up and smiled with her eyes and cheekbones. An image of Barnabas’s
Rehana came to her, but it looked like a female version of Reglum
Bammary.
Deep dark eyes and glossy black hair
, Sally thought. A blurry
image of another young woman, an African girl but in a city that
looked like London, flitted across her mind; Sally had no idea who
the young woman was. An image of James Kidlington sitting alone
in a cell erased all else. Sally pushed that back, squeezing tears away
from her eyes. “Sleep,” she commanded herself against the pain.
Sleep obliged. Sally woke up for one second more. “
Sehnsucht
,” she
said and then, thinking of Tom, she fell asleep without dreaming.
It was the last dreamless night Sally would have until the
Gallinule
reached Yount.

Tom fended off a branch as the Cretched Man’s ship sailed close
in along a shore overhung with giant trees and choked with
undergrowth. Billy Sea-Hen, Pinch, and Tat’head did the same,
cursing as stinging insects flew at them from the greenery. The
bosun called out yet another depth-reading, sailors with long poles
pushed away roots and debris.

“Well, Tom,” said Billy. “We knows we’re not in London anymore,
what with wasps the size of chickens flyin’ at us . . .”

A large branch tangled itself in the rigging, forcing the ship
almost onto the shore. Overhead the leaves rustled as if a large fish
were swimming through the foliage. Something with webbed paws
and too many eyes jumped from the tree onto the deck, long ears
streaming behind it. It seized a sailor, tucked him under its arm like
a loaf of bread, and bounded towards the railing.

“No!” yelled Tom and the Minders in unison. Tat’head dived
on top of the snarling creature. The monster dropped the sailor,
wrapped its talons around Tat’head’s neck.

Tom grabbed the thing’s donkey-ears, pulled back hard.

The thing howled, let loose of Tat’head, and grabbed Tom’s
hands.

Before Tom could respond, the leaper bit two of Tom’s fingers off,
sheared away from his right hand.

Tom screamed but grappled his enemy, hoisted it up, rammed its
multi-eyed head against the mast over and over again until its neck
snapped and its brains were smeared on the wood.

Tom looked dully at his bleeding hand, heard far away the
shouts of Billy and Tat and Jambres. The last thing he saw before he
collapsed was a finger in a puddle of blood on the deck.

For the next three days, fever smothered Tom. Blood kept seeping
from the wound; something in the thing’s saliva slowed coagulation.
Jambres put forth a power to staunch the flow and quiet the fever.
Everyone on ship prayed for Tom’s recovery.

On the morning of the fourth day, the fever broke.

Billy Sea-Hen, sitting beside Tom, said, “By Wee Willie Hawken,
you’re back.”

Jambres, sitting on the other side of the bed, smiled.

“Here he is just, Tom Two-Fingers,” said Billy. “That’s what we’ve
taken to callin’ you, lad. Two-Fingers!”

Billy reached down, brought up a jar sloshing with alcohol, which
he presented to Tom.

“Here, we saved this for you,” Billy said. “We could not find the
other one. We think the monster swallered it.”

In the jar floated a finger.

“Oh, our second gift, young master,” said Billy, bending down to
collect a long, flat box. “You earned these, right enough — the sailor
whose life you saved, and Tat, they thank you in particular.”

Billy opened the box, which held two long fleshy ears, grey-yellow, still moist, pinned to the bottom like a butterfly.

“Should be the thing’s teeth,” Billy said, with a feral smile. “But
we daren’t touch its gob for fear of poison.”

Tom tried to thank Billy but felt suddenly sick.

Jambres stroked Tom’s brow, whispered, “Sleep, Thomas, sleep.
Restore yourself. Soon we will sail into the place called Sanctuary.”
Some time later, Tom looked out the window of a house by a beryline
sea. Gulls with silver wings flew by. Sanderlings, the palest grey
with twinkling black legs, ran to and fro, chasing the surf, and being
chased by it up to the sea-kale and blite on the tideline. The door
opened in the room behind him, and the Cretched Man said, “Good
morning, Thomas.”

Tom continued to gaze out the window. A gull plucked a crab
from the water.

“Come, Thomas. You dally. Or do you ignore me of purpose?”

Tom stirred, turned halfway towards the Cretched Man, and
said, “Forgive me, Jambres. I meant no reproach. It’s just that, after
all these weeks tracking through the void, my mind is oppressed.”

The Cretched Man smiled in sad understanding as he said,
“Oppression is the drainage of our punishment, the ichor squeezed
slowly from our sin until we drown in it.”

Tom looked back out the window. He saw someone farther down
the beach gathering kelp, one of the Minders. The apprentice from
Mincing Lane said, “To me, it feels more like a sort of animalcule
chafing and gnawing at my mind.”

“As you wish,” said the Cretched Man with a terse laugh. “I deny
no man his own image of despair. Extract or insect, however we see
it, what you feel is the counterweight to longing.”

Tom nodded slowly, then spoke. “What is this place? Is this Yount
at last?”

“Nearly. We sit on Yount’s borders, if we may speak in such terms
in the interstitial realms. Though the echoes and wind-walls make
talk of borders here illusory.”

“How far then?” asked Tom.

“One day more, perhaps two by ship, with Ermandel’s Toe and
the Dog Star as our guides.”

“Yet this place,” Tom gestured around the room and out the
window, “is a home of some kind to you, I take it.”

The Cretched Man looked past Tom, out the window, to the
wheeling gulls and the man piling kelp on a wheelbarrow down the
strand. “Nay,” he said so softly Tom barely heard him. “A ciborium
without the host, an empty chalice. Not home. But a haven for a
while.”

Tom heard again the note in Jambres’s voice, like a fracture deep
in an otherwise unflawed gem. Using the hand that now lacked two
fingers, Tom pointed to the kelp-gathering figure on the beach.
“Billy Sea-Hen and his lads call this place Sanctuary. They spoke to
me of it before we arrived here yesterday.”

The Cretched Man, whose carapace was maroon and subdued
this morning, murmured as if Tom were not present, “Sanctuary, it
is. It’s just not home. No place to rest. ‘Living in darkness, lacking all
light, I sear myself away.’”

“What?” said Tom.

“Nothing,” said the Cretched Man. His gaze returned to his
surroundings, fell upon Tom’s still-extended arm. “Let’s have a look
at your damaged hand, shall we?”

Tom offered his right hand, bandaged and missing the little and
ring fingers.

“Hmmm,” said the Cretched Man. “Improved, I am happy to see.
But, alas, only to a point: there is no incarnative spell or medicine
that will regenerate your lost digits.”

Tom turned away and said nothing. Without the Cretched Man’s
ministrations in the aftermath of the attack, Tom might have died
of blood loss or infection. Tom hesitated to place too great a faith in
gratitude but could not help himself.

Outside the house, just above the high tide line, was a small yard
of coarse beach-grass flanked by low dunes. A rough table and chairs
made of pinewood sat in the yard. A teapot was on the table, along
with biscuits, lard, and smoked fish. Gulls circled above the table
but did not land.