Zenith (9 page)

A sob shakes him. He swallows it down and wipes his nose with the tail of his windwrap, wipes his leaky eyes too. He tugs the windwrap tight around him, secures it
with his belt, and stands up to walk the bridgeways back to the lagoon. He doesn’t even think about jumping the boat roofs as he usually does. Couldn’t anyway; he can’t see clear for his blurry eyes. It takes all his energy to put one foot in front of the other. When he reaches the lagoon, he’s engulfed by people. They pack the walkways around the lagoon and the arms of the Middle Bridges. The crowd is so huge the whole of Pomperoy must be out.

What’s happened? Is it another ship?

But there’s no panic in the crowd. They are expectant, quiet, still.

Tuck elbows his way to the edge of the lagoon.
Why is everyone staring out at the water?

When he sees, his heart skips a beat.

It’s the Steer Master’s ship.
The Discovery
has unchained from the cluster of tall ships at the North side of the lagoon. It sweeps across the water, aglow with lanterns, its sails billowing in the evening wind.

Until he saw the
Arkiel
, Tuck would have sworn the Steer Master’s ship was the greatest vessel upon the seas. Now the three-masted ship seems a much lesser thing. For the first time Tuck sees how wrecked it is, how the bent masts creak wearily with bedraggled sails.

Still, the sight of it lifts his spirits. The citizens of Pomperoy cheer as
The Discovery
sails into the heart of the lagoon. The ship drops anchor. Expectation buzzes in the crowd.

Tuck pushes to get a clear view. When he reaches the front of the crowd he sees the figure of the Steer Master himself; it’s the first time he’s glimpsed him since he was small enough to sit on the shoulders of his Da. Even then, the Steer Master was old and feeble, though there was an energy about him still. Now he seems lifeless, slumped in
the seat of an old world Land vessel, an ancient car recovered from the sea. A team of attendants hauls the Steer Master’s car to the front of the ship. It’s a Rover, Tuck knows, because Grumpa liked to gloat that Tuck’s own Landcestors once owned just such a car; one as sleek and shiny and speedy as the wind. It’s hard to believe that the Steer Master’s Rover was ever anything other than a rusty ocean-battered wreck, encrusted with limpet shells.

‘We are wounded.’

It’s not the real voice of the Steer Master. The Pilot of Pomperoy, a tall and commanding man, nicknamed The Pomp on account of his pompous demeanor, is the Steer Master’s vigorous right arm. Nowadays, his voice too. The Pomp relays the Steer Master’s message through the long spiralling tusk of a narwhal horn.

‘Wounded but still strong. Pomperoy, are we strong?’

The crowd pushes against Tuck, almost landing him in the lagoon. He loses track of The Pomp’s words but the voice has the rising rhythm of a gathering storm. The crowd rouses and Tuck realizes he was wrong. Anger is simmering all about him. Pomperoy has not forgotten about the
Arkiel
.

The Pomp continues. ‘We will not forget what we are. We gypseas are masters of our ocean.’

An attendant reaches through the empty frame of the Rover’s front window and raises the frail arm of the Steer Master. For a moment, Tuck wonders if the Steer Master is even awake. Does he know what is being said in his name? But the rapt faces in the crowd around Tuck tell him it’s a lone doubt. The crowd is hushed, tense, fixed on every word.

‘This attack on us is a test. Pomperoy will rise to the test,’ continues The Pomp. He puts the narwhal horn to
his lips and blows out a deep bellow, an alien sound that sends a shudder to Tuck’s heart. Pomperoy seems to hold its breath.

The Pomp raises the horn above his head. He aims the tip of the horn past a cluster of stars in the shape of a long-handled salt basket towards the small salt scoop twinkling above it. At the very tip of the salt scoop’s handle is the Star of the North. Its light is still a faint pinprick in the salmon-streaked twilight. Tuck knows the map of the sky better than his own face. A gypsea child learns the patterns of the stars in its cradle; the pictures in the stars are glittering bedtime tales. And now he knows why Pomperoy hasn’t shown its rage sooner. Gypseas sail by the stars. The city was only waiting till the first stars came out.

In The Pomp’s other hand is the long wing of a Great Skua, the ravaging pirate bird of the northern seas. The Pomp holds the wing up towards the rig, pointing it at the face of The Man. The citizens of Pomperoy watch the wing shiver and bend. The Pomp looks at the slumbersome face of the Steer Master and nods.

‘The world’s wind is with us. Attend to all masts. In the name of The Man, on the wing of the Great Skua and the command of the Steer Master, we will avenge our dead and salvage our pride. Pomperoy will set sail on the tail of the
Arkiel
tonight!’

The crowd erupts. Moments after the cheering dies, before Tuck has gathered his thoughts, the walkways around the lagoon begin to empty. He tries to grab someone to ask what he should do but everyone is rushing off; they all seem to know.

There’s a shout behind him. Gypseas are yelling at him to move.

Tuck panics.
Where to?

The city fills with the rattling and clanking of the boat chains unlocking.

A mighty BOOM almost scares Tuck out of his skin. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Tuck ducks for cover and pulls his windwrap over him like a tent as a storm of booms erupts. In his seventeen years, Tuck has never heard such a noise, but all of a sudden he knows what it is. He looks up.

The big ships are launching their skysails! Tuck stares open-mouthed at the glorious billows high in the sky. Crowds of fluttering shadows have massed below the skysails as the rest of the city unfurls the boat sails from its masts.

All around the lagoon bridges are heaved on to ships and boats. The great arms of the Middle Bridges that link to the rig crash into the lagoon. The clang of unfastened boat chains is deafening. Now a great groaning fills the city.

The anchors, thinks Tuck, and falls flat on his face as the walkways are hauled up, right under his feet.

Wind fills the masts and skysails. The rigging creaks and whines. Pomperoy heaves into motion like a great beast stretching limbs that have been chained too long.

In the second before the walkway he is standing on disappears, Tuck makes a leap for an abandoned gondola left behind in what was the market, moments ago. There’s a coil of rope. He throws it to a passing boat in the hope that someone might catch it, but the rope whacks back down on his head.

In front, the sea is being churned into froth by a steam ship. The
Waverley
’s old body is armoured against the ocean with layers of metal and rubber tyres. Its defunct
steam funnels now support thick branches of masts. Tuck whirls the rope around his head, yelling for help.

‘Hey, lad, throw it up!’

A woman on board the
Waverley
has spotted him. Tuck throws up the rope, she catches it, knots it around the boat rail. Tuck knots the other end of the rope to the anchor on the floor of the gondola, and he’s hitched a ride.

As he hangs on, blasted by wind and surf, there’s a fleeting memory of the dark-haired girl on the
Arkiel
, knocked to her knees by the movement of the ship. A mirror image of himself, sprawled here, now, in the gondola, caught in the thrust of the vast, motley fleet that his city has just become.

Pomperoy is set for North, for revenge, chasing the
Arkiel
.

And Tuck is hanging on for his life.

Mara opens her eyes. Broomielaw is shaking her out of sleep. She looks panicky and scared. Mara sits up, dizzy and sick. Her head is fuzzy and her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth.

‘The baby,’ she croaks. ‘Clay, is he—’

‘He’s safe, remember? Mol was holding him when the ship crashed.’

Mara lets out a breath. ‘I forgot. I was dreaming about him – a horrible dream. But he’s safe.’

‘You’re not safe here, Mara. People are fighting over the water tanks.’ Broomielaw nods to a noisy brawl on the far side of the ship’s hold. ‘You must be exhausted to sleep through that. Quick, come up on deck. We’ve been gathering rain in empty tins and packets so we don’t have to fight over it with that lot.’

Broomielaw pulls her to her feet. Up on deck, mouthfuls of rainwater start to clear Mara’s head. But a clear head brings flashbacks of the sinking barge. Mara
splashes her face with cold water, trying to wash away the sickening images and sounds.

‘She’s trouble,’ mutters Broomielaw. She squeezes Mara’s arm. ‘We know it wasn’t your fault.’

Ruby, the tall, stern woman who challenged Mara before, stands in the centre of a crowd of refugees.

‘So what do
you
think we should do?’ another woman argues. ‘The girl seems sure there’s land in the North. At least she has a plan. What’s yours?’

‘What plan does she have?’ Ruby scorns. ‘To smash through more ships and kill more people? To head to the ends of the Earth on a whim?’

‘There’s the girl over there. Ask her,’ says a man. He points to Mara and a hundred faces turn.

Mara wipes the streaming rainwater from her face. Still foggy-headed, she faces the crowd.

‘It’s not a whim,’ she says. She clears her throat but even to herself her voice sounds cracked with doubt. ‘There’s a book I found in the drowned city. It’s in my backpack. It says Greenland is a huge island of mountains at the top of the world. Once the weight of all the ice is gone, it could bob up like a cork.’

‘Bob up like a cork? A huge land of mountains would
bob up like a cork
?’ Ruby couldn’t be more scathing.

‘The ice has melted, the seas have risen so—’

‘Yes, we’ve noticed,’ Ruby interrupts. ‘But how do you know Greenland hasn’t drowned? Everywhere else has.’

Mara glares at the sarcastic woman, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. ‘It’s written in my book. I found it in the university – that was the old place of learning, so it must be—’

Mara halts, unsure now.

‘
Must
be true? Why? That other book I’ve seen you reading – did you find that in the university too? Is everything
it
says true?’

Ruby holds up
A Tale of Two Cities
. People stare at the unfamiliar object with gold lettering on its cracked leather cover. Shocked, Mara pushes through the crowd.

‘That’s mine. Give it back!’

‘You were asleep and it was lying beside you. I borrowed it. I had good reason to.’

‘Give it back.’

Mara is no longer trembling, she’s shaking with anger. This woman is treating her like a silly child. Ruby has no idea what she has been through – an immense struggle, unbearable losses. All, in the end, to save someone like Ruby. And now she has to live with another burden of guilt: the bargeful of deaths in the floating city.

‘Ruby,’ a cool voice warns. ‘Let it be.’

Ruby doesn’t even blink.

‘This book is full of lies,’ she tells the other refugees. ‘It’s just a made-up story about people who never existed. This book is full of things that aren’t true.’

‘Yes, but – but
some
books—’

‘How do we know,’ Ruby cuts in, ‘what’s true and what’s not? How do we know that what it says in an old book about an island bobbing up is true? What if it’s just a story? Someone’s silly idea? What if it’s all wrong?’

The faces around her are doubtful; even those of Mara’s friends, though they try to hide it.

‘I
know
it’s true.’

But Mara doesn’t. What
is
her proof ? She has believed the book because she needed to. It was her one hope. If it’s wrong, what will they do? Being wrong about land at the
top of the world will turn the ship from a floating village into a floating coffin, once they run out of water and food.

And she has been wrong before, so wrong it cost the lives of the people most precious to her.

Rowan has pushed to the front of the crowd. Mara can’t look at him. Gail, his twin and her best friend, died because Mara believed, wrongly, that they’d find refuge in the New World.

Ruby is holding up another book.

The book on Greenland!

Mara lunges at the woman to snatch back the book, just as the ship dips into a valley of sea. As it lurches back up over the rise of a wave, Mara loses her balance. There’s a flutter like wings above her head. Mara hurls herself into the air with a yell.

Too late. The wind whips her precious book over the side of the ship. The fragile pages rip and scatter, then vanish among flecks of ocean spray.

Mara turns around.

‘You
threw
it – you—’