Zenith (8 page)

The ship grinds on, further into the city. Mara stares at the controls and doesn’t know what to do.

Tuck looks up, puzzled. The gulls are going crazy this morning. Beyond the frantic shrieks is a noise that makes his blood run cold though he has no idea what it is.

Tuck stares at the lagoon. The water is still dark, keeping grip of the night. A moment ago it was calm, rising and falling in a drowsy pulse, but now a great shudder rips across the smooth waves.

Tuck watches, puzzled. All around the lagoon the stockholders, busy loading goods on to their gondolas, freeze as the strange shudder vibrates across the city. The gondolas begin to crash into each other as the shudder on the lagoon builds into rolling waves.

There are shouts from the Middle Bridges. A scream rips through Tuck’s bewildered daze and he races up on to an arm of the bridge.

A great white ship has entered the city.

It’s much bigger than any vessel in Pomperoy.

At first, Tuck thinks it has docked in one of the sea paths. Then he sees that the ship is still moving, faster than his stunned mind. As he stares open-mouthed, the
ship smashes into one of Doycha’s largest bridges. In that moment, Tuck registers several things. The screams he thought were gulls are not. It’s people, screaming for their lives. And the ship has not entered by any seaway. It is ploughing straight into Pomperoy.

The bridge seems to explode. Debris juts into the air, in exclamations of shock that scatter across Doycha. Tuck’s stomach lurches. Not all of it is debris. Scattered people, broken bodies, are among the wreckage; early risers on their way to market.

A bone-chilling sound splices the air. Tuck covers his ears.

The ship seems to be reversing.

Tuck peers at the patch of city beyond the maze of Doycha’s boats and bridges to where the barges should be. The murky light makes it hard to see but he spots the dark bulks of
Troon
and
Crossness
, the neighbouring barges. One of them is wounded and listing to one side, but it’s there. Why can’t he see
The Grimby Gray
? Tuck runs from one side of the bridge to the other to get a better view, but it’s no good. For some reason, he can’t see his own barge.

His heart slumps into his stomach. A taste of metal in the air makes him feel sick. His limbs are suddenly heavy, as if his clothes are weighted with sea. He can’t move.

And then he does. He’s racing off the Middle Bridge, down into Doycha, leaping across boat roofs and bridges, the pain in his ankle numbed by shock.

He runs on to a bridge alongside the white ship then stops. What can he do?

He grabs the arm of an old man beside him. ‘What’s happening? What is it?’

The old man is shock-white, shaking with fear.

‘
Arkiel
,’ he mutters blankly.

‘What?’

The old man points to the bold nameplate on the ship. ‘
Arkiel
. It’s taken my wife.’

Tuck stares helplessly at the mass of people crowding the
Arkiel
’s decks. Their screams mingle with those in the boats and barges the ship is ploughing into.

‘
Stop!
’

Tuck yells at the ship until his throat hurts. What else can he do? There’s no way anyone can board the ship; its sides are too sheer, too steep, with no grip, no footholds. His cries merge with a multitude of frantic voices, as if the gypseas of Pomperoy are trying to halt the
Arkiel
with a wall of noise.

A girl has climbed up on to the roof of the ship’s control cabin. She is caught in a shot of sunlight and throws an arm across her eyes, blinded by the glare. A great shudder shakes the
Arkiel
as it demolishes a swathe of Doycha and the girl is thrown to her knees.

Another impact hurls the girl right off the cabin roof. The last Tuck sees of her is the scatter of her hair, like a splash of oil, as she tumbles into the crowd on the ship’s deck.

Tuck stares around him, dizzy and disorientated, as if he’s taken a hard fall himself. Where’s
The Grimby Gray
? He rubs his eyes, searching frantically for the familiar rusty wreck of his own barge.
This
is where it should be. Tuck doesn’t understand. And then he does.

The ship is where his barge should be.

Tuck feels sick to his stomach, as if he’s swallowed mouthfuls of sea. He makes himself look down, and he sees it.

Under the water,
The Grimby Gray
has sunk like a rusted tin can.

There are bodies, pale ghosts in the darkness of the ocean. Half-drowned people are being pulled on to boats. Tuck panics.
Ma? Where’s Ma?
A horrible feeling, as if he’s been sliced open and gutted like a fish, makes him wrap his arms around himself. He can’t see her. And the sharp, empty feeling tells him he won’t.

She couldn’t swim. If she tried, the panic and struggle would bring on an attack of wheezing. She wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s if she woke up at all. More likely, the barge would have sunk before Ma, deep in beer-glazed slumber, even knew what was happening. The only chance she’d have had is if he’d been there.

But he wasn’t.

Tuck looks back across the city at The Man.

He can just about make out the white-bearded face up on the bridge, beaming his relentless smile. Tuck crosses his fingers, but instead of raising them in the good-luck sign, he makes the reverse sign, the malevolent one. He jabs his crossed fingers straight at The Man’s plastic face.

Why Ma? Why old Arthus and all the others? Why not me? I was the one going to steal you. I was the one that didn’t believe in you. Never even laid a finger on you though, did I? You never gave me a chance.

Grumpa was wrong about The Man. He’s not just a bit of junk. His eyes can look into the dark corners of your mind. He might grant you the miracle you need or punish you without mercy if he doesn’t like what he sees.

What else does he see? What else has he planned?

The
Arkiel
keeps ploughing through the city in reverse, making a catastrophically clumsy exit.

Up high on the rig, The Man watches and smiles.

Tuck wanders the city, blank and numb. He ends up back at the lagoon and slumps down on the damp wooden walkways, exhausted. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, shivering, when a hand on his shoulder makes him jump.

‘You’re alive then.’

Pendicle sits down beside him with a sigh of relief.

‘Ma’s gone,’ says Tuck. He has to force the words out; he still doesn’t believe it. ‘She went down with
The Grimby Gray
.’

‘
Urth
,’ Pendicle curses softly. He bites his lip and clearly doesn’t know what else to say. They sit together awhile, just staring out at the waves on the lagoon. All of a sudden Pendicle gets to his feet. He punches Tuck softly on the shoulder, in place of soft words.

‘There’s a family meeting,’ says Pendicle, with the faint edge of self-importance in his voice that, lately, Tuck has begun to hear. ‘Something’s happening.’

Tuck gives a small, hard laugh. ‘It already
happened
.’

Pendicle’s eyes are on his home-boat, one of the Prenders’ fleet of masted mega-yachts, anchored alongside
the family’s market gondolas on the lagoon. A group of people, their windwraps bearing the Prender emblem, are gathered on its deck. Men and woman flock to Pendicle’s home-boat from grand yachts and schooners all around the lagoon. Their windwraps are emblazoned with the various emblems of Pomperoy’s oil families. Tuck realizes the reason for Pendicle’s self-important tone. It’s not an everyday family meeting, but an extraordinary summit of the powerful families that rule Pomperoy.

Pendicle shoves something into a pocket of Tuck’s windwrap. Tuck hears the rattle of pearls.

‘Enough to get you bed and board somewhere, get you sorted,’ says Pendicle. ‘I’d better go.’

Once upon a time, Pendicle would have taken him back to his boat for a hot meal and a bunk. But he’s changing, Tuck senses, from his old mate Pendicle into a fully fledged Prender, becoming part of the powerful engine of the oil families, no longer the carefree wildhead he used to be. Even if Pendicle would harbour Tuck, his Ma won’t. She’s the kind of woman you cross once if you dare; never twice. That’s how the Prenders got to be who they are. She’ll be heart-sorry about what’s happened to his Ma, she’ll even put Tuck in her prayers to The Man, but she’ll never have him near her precious boat again.

Tuck watches Pendicle walk round the lagoon to his yacht, tall and proud, with his beautiful windwrap flapping in the wind. It’s the walk of a Prender man. Tuck looks down at his own faded blue windwrap, a worn castoff of his Da’s. His hair whips across his face, as light and unkempt as Pendicle’s is sleekly plaited and dark.

Their differences never mattered when Da was alive.

It’s only once Pendicle has gone that Tuck remembers the tattered object he has been carrying about in a pocket
of his windwrap; something he stole from a shelf in Pendicle’s yacht a while ago. He’s been meaning to give it back as a peace offering. It’s no use to him anyway. He took the thing all around the market with the rest of his loot, but all it earned him was shrugs. At last he came across an old scavenger in a leaky gondola that looked close to sinking under the weight of its sea spoil. The scavenger was so weathered he seemed to be made out of one of his rescued leather boots. He squinted sunken eyes at the stained and tatty object Tuck handed him and gave it back, saying his eyes were no good for books now. He didn’t know anyone else who had any use for a such a thing; he was one of the last who still knew how to read words.

So Tuck’s still got the book in a pocket of his windwrap. He should run after Pendicle and give it back. But Pendicle’s already gone, his dark head and windwrap merged with the other Prenders on the boat.

Pendicle’s left him with a pocketful of pearls, the hard tears of the ocean, and it’s Tuck’s own fault.

Already, the city is knitting back together. The great tear made by the
Arkiel
is disappearing fast. Tuck stands on a bridge and stares at the spot where his home used to be.

The air rings and clatters with the noise of boat chains and hammers. Wood and metal strain, mixed with human groans, as the boats and bridges are heaved into a new pattern, and chained together again.

By sundown, the city is mended. It’s as if all the sunken boats and bridgeways were never there.

Tuck can’t bear it. They should have left the hole in the city. There should be some mark, some scar of what’s happened. Urth knows how many people are drowned, Ma among them, yet already Pomperoy seems to want to heal the awful scar and get on with the usual business of life. Ma will hardly have fallen to rest on the seabed, where she’ll end up as fish food, like the rest of his family and all the other dead.