Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 31 Read online

“What?” said Moon.

  She nodded at the pipe in his pocket. “You don’t smoke, and you never have. You get a cold foot at night, though, and the other foot—ah.” She glanced at him with almost a smile. “You don’t have the other foot. You’re not quite used to that yet, but you hide it well, I thought before that you were only a little lame. And it explains the bruises. Your liver isn’t all it could be. And you have an ingrown fingernail on your other hand and it’s getting unpleasant, but I saw that at dinner. “

  She released his hand. “I don’t know if any of that’s useful.”

  “Nothing I didn’t know,” said Moon. He stared at her and she looked down at her own hands. “But I don’t know how the hell you know it. What was that?”

  “I showed you so that you’ll believe me when I say there is something I don’t like about Fuille,” she said.

  “Maybe it was a lucky guess,” said Moon. “Maybe you’re a—a charlatan. Or maybe you really are a doctor’s secretary and can guess when someone is liverish. Try it on someone else. I’ll get Alban, there’s got to be something wrong with him.”

  “Please, no!” said Ivana. “I only showed you so that you’ll believe me about Fuille. I much rather nobody else know.”

  Her alarm was sincere enough that Moon subsided back onto the desk. “It could still have been a lucky guess,” he grumbled, to keep the curious mix of discomfort and excitement at bay.

  “Your journalist!” said Ivana abruptly.

  “Eliza?”

  “Yes. She took my hand back in Port Fury. She has a tearing scar, up her side and her hand will ache from writing, at times. She wears shoes that are too small—”

  “She’s vain,” supplied Moon.

  “And she’s pregnant.”

  “Hell,” said Moon, mildly. He took out his pipe and held it meditatively.

  “She didn’t tell you,” said Ivana, her face falling. “I thought—”

  “I was distracted by weatherfinders,” said Moon. “She promised me news in Poorfortune.” He raised his eyebrows in thought, then returned the pipe to his pocket. “I shall have to endeavour to appear surprised.” He supposed he ought in good conscience have been preoccupied by Eliza’s interesting predicament, but was more interested to find he did not doubt Ivana.

  “How do you do it?” he asked.

  Ivana, taken up by her own thoughts, answered almost without noticing. “I see the patterns in blood,” she said. “More clearly than in air.” Her focus returned to him and she said, “Not destiny, or fortune, or any of that, and I can’t heal anything. At least, only by ordinary means.”

  “Doctor’s secretary,” murmured Moon.

  Ivana ducked her head. “I see paths and eddies, what’s going right and what’s wrong. I feel it the same way I felt the wind, only people are so much smaller. You said experience and books would teach me about the wind, and I’m not a fool. I’ve studied to understand what I see in a man’s veins. But the wind was so huge. I felt as if my mind was being scoured.”

  This revelation, beyond the legends of weatherfinders in his books, was too important for Moon to take in all at once. Concentrating on the immediate issue, he said, “And you don’t like Fuille.”

  She shook her head. “He’s got chemicals—things in his blood that embalmers use, and anaesthetists. Not a sudden concentration, but little pieces, all the way through, as if he uses them all the time. Drugs that must alter the way he moves and sleeps and thinks. That’s why I don’t like him, together with the things he said, and—other reasons.”

  “He’s a government scientist,” said Moon, but the explanation sounded poor besides Ivana’s recital. He told himself he was put off-kilter by Eliza’s news, but that wasn’t it. It struck him that a government scientist might be interested in Ivana’s broad talents. But it was too late in the evening to worry about mad scientists, or the confidence Ivana had given to his keeping.

  “What happened to your leg?” she asked at last.

  Moon shook himself, glad of a lighter turn to the conversation.

  “The People’s Poorfortune Hospital cut it off,” he said. “I don’t have time for doctors—always saying you should have gone looking for them after every fight, instead of waiting to be carried in. I think they amputated out of spite. But I got out of it with a bulletproof leg, which isn’t something to sneeze at.”

  “Do you get into a lot of fights?” asked Ivana.

  “Not for want of trying,” said Moon. His thoughts were straying again. “What you did isn’t normal. People might be interested. To the tune of State Interests, and money.”

  “I know,” said Ivana quietly. She did not say that she trusted him not to betray her. Her silence was more persuasive than words might have been.

  Moon thought a little longer, until Ivana said, “You’re looking at me like you look at your ship.”

  “Apologies,” said Moon, pulled from his reverie. He stood up to show her out of the cabin and to her closet. There was much he felt he ought to say in parting, but he settled for, “Just don’t tell Fuille.”

  Fuille had indicated a preference to eat alone in his cabin for the past two days, relieving Moon of the need to be civil to the man or observe Alban and Tomasch’s attempts at table-waiting.

  “Where is that weatherfinder of yours?” the scientist demanded, as soon as he had taken a seat in Moon’s cabin. His careful grey fingers toyed carelessly with the delicate glass Moon had provided. The port-wine moved in it like old blood.

  “About some atmospheric business,” said Moon. It could even have been true. His small library was outdated, but Ivana had applied herself to it single-mindedly in the preceding days. Alban and Tomasch were incapable of conversing with her, so meals were silent, and she proved to be a faster reader than Moon, who had sat across from her at meals, his own plans unrolled on the table, trying to guess her thoughts from her expressions while she read.

  She had stood, too, beneath the Hyssop’s glass dome, talking to Cally and staring at the clouds. When the bitterwind fell, she borrowed Moon’s glass eye-mask, belted the fur-lined overjacket and clambered about the sides, always too close to falling. She had gained her airlegs quickly enough, Moon hoped, to convince Fuille she had always been only an ordinary weatherfinder after all, and not an untrained prodigy. Still, neither he nor Alban, who shut his eyes each time, liked to see her going over the side of the ship again.

  “We will make Poorfortune the day after next, all going smoothly,” said Moon.

  “I count on you to make it smooth,” growled Fuille. “There will be lawsuits enough if any of my cargo has already been damaged by the events of this voyage, let alone by further delay. It does not pay to thwart the plans of Their Majesties’ Government, Captain.”

  Moon did not answer. As he had bowed Fuille into his cabin, he had seen Ivana descending through the grilled hatches. Fuille pushed back his glass now and stood. As he did so, he brushed his hand against a line in the timber of the cabin wall, almost idly. “It is a very old ship, is it not?”

  “The builder would be flattered,” lied Moon glibly. “She’s a replica. The colours are based on a pleasure ship from the last century, but I’m afraid she’s all modern, and cost considerably more than she’s worth. Let me pour you another.”

  “How did you come by it, then?” asked the scientist, not sitting down. Suspicion lined his pallid face. “Even this copper in the walls is not cheap.”

  “Very accurate, isn’t she?” said Moon. “On the surface at least. Underneath I’m afraid she has new bones. Still, I call it good luck that brought her to me. Won her in a game of squares.” He spoke quickly, but it was clear Fuille was inclined to leave. Moon did not know if he worried more that Fuille would find Ivana in the cargo hold, or that she would blame Moon for not holding Fuille longer.

  “You k
now a lot about the era?” went on Moon, brightly. He crossed to the front of the cabin. “Perhaps you could give me advice on these window fittings. My friend on the Orient says they should be brass but I think it would be more accurate—”

  “Window fittings,” growled Fuille, “are beneath . . .” then stopped, slammed open the door of the cabin and left.

  I’m going to be down a weatherfinder, thought Moon. While he waited for the shouting to begin, a shadow flickered through the light from the cabin window behind him.

  Moon turned. The window showed blue sky and then a flurry like black wings. Cursed ravens, he thought, and then, we’re too high for birds. He opened the window and caught a fold of heavy blue cloth as it swung once more towards him. It was anchored by something below, and the icy wind struck dull the sound of Ivana’s voice as she shouted, “Pull me up!”

  For the second time, Moon hauled her in, his good foot braced against the wall. As he dragged her over the windowsill she yelled. “It’s murder!”

  “Not yet, but it will be,” said Moon through gritted teeth, thinking of Fuille.

  He set her on her feet as she said, “Necessary sacrifice, then? Hazards of employment? Those who live by the wind—” her voice broke.

  “Calm down,” said Moon. “No-one’s died. Everyone’s at their stations.”

  Before he could close the window fully, Ivana gripped the edge with a thick-gloved hand. “There’s something ugly coming,” she said, and tugged down the fur collar of the coat to speak more clearly. Her voice was flat. “I’m only warning you because I’m on this ship too, or else you might have your fate and welcome to it. There’s a coiling twisting in the air, a big storm. And I need something hard and heavy.” She darted past Moon to get the rubber-dipped line hook. He grasped it as she returned.

  “Are you going to stop the storm with this?” he asked.

  “No.” said Ivana. “Fuille.” She pulled the line hook free and opened the window again fully.

  Moon put his hand up against the cold air. “Fuille didn’t go that way.”

  Ivana stopped with one leg over the window sill. She tugged up the heavy goggles and looked at him, no merriment left in her eyes. “No, Captain. My brother did,” she said. “He won’t be coming back.” Then she shook herself and added, with bitterness and no sincerity, “Not that you have reason to care. I’m terribly sorry about your precious figurehead.” She folded herself out the window.

  “No, wait, what?” said Moon, but Ivana had already dropped and scrambled to the base of the figurehead. One hand gripping the lines, she swung at the graceful figure with a will.

  “No!” said Moon, “This is my ship! Ignore everything I said. I will throw you over the side!” The wind choked the words back into his throat. He slammed the window shut, latched it and turned, fuming, to find himself face to face with Fuille.

  “Is everything in order, Mr Fuille?” he asked, with a reasonable facsimile of calm.

  “I could ask you the same,” said Fuille.

  “Mere nothing. Difference of opinion,” said Moon. “With the steersman. Can I help you?”

  “I should not have thought he could hear you from here,” said Fuille. “I went to my room to fetch my commonplace book—I keep a record of . . . intriguing artefacts. I thought I might have something relevant to your window latch. May I have a closer look?”

  Moon stood, back to the window. He hoped Ivana would not try to get in again, and at the same time that she would not need to, and would not freeze to death. You found one weatherfinder, there must be others, he scolded himself, you only have one Hyssop. “I wouldn’t ask a scientist of your standing to trouble himself with such trifles,” said Moon.

  “Nonsense,” said Fuille. “You were so insistent before. It is the least I can do to repay your hospitality.”

  He opened the book and flipped through it. “It so happens that I have seen some ships not unlike this one. Less festively coloured perhaps.” Moon, taller than Fuille, looked down to see a rough sketch not of a window latch but of a figurehead of unmistakeable elegance, pale and long-jawed, with a lantern in its outstretched hand. Where it should have joined the ship, the drawing disintegrated into a network of carefully labelled lines.

  Moon leaned against the window. “You should secure your cargo,” he said. “I’ll send the boys to help. Weatherfinder says there’s a storm coming.”

  “It’s as blue a day as you could care to see,” said Fuille. “The rigours of this crossing have been exaggerated. You should secure your brandy—it has addled your woman’s brains.”

  Moon thought he heard the slap of cloth against the window once more. He hoped his shoulders blocked the glass. If Ivana had not already damaged the figurehead beyond recognition, he did not want to give Fuille the chance to study it.

  “Sky’s deceiving,” said Moon. “Said there’s a bad storm coming. Could be here anytime. Small ship. Very good weatherfinder.”

  “You think I cannot tell the fresh marks of a pen from the ink of a tattoo?” said Fuille smoothly. “This is very gallant of you, and I’m sure she’s sufficiently grateful, considering it is as you say such a small ship, but I must insist, Captain, that you permit me—”

  “My weatherfinder went down to the cargo hold earlier and hasn’t come back up the hatch,” said Moon.

  Fuille’s forced pleasantness evaporated. He spun on his heel and ran out of the cabin. Moon latched the cabin door and turned back as glass shattered behind him. Reaching the window, he wrenched it open and caught the line hook.

  “I will . . . throw you . . . over . . . the side!” he shouted into the wind, punctuating the sentence by shaking the hook. He let go. Ivana, who had been pulling down, fell backwards and slipped. Moon saw her fall into the wind, only to jerk to a halt. She still held onto a line by one gloved hand.

  Moon did not later remember how he got himself out the window.

  The wind hit him like white fire. He gripped a line and dropped down into the slight shelter of the ravaged figurehead. The cold stung his eyes to tears, but he reached out, caught the front of Ivana’s coat and towed her back to the ledge. “I didn’t mean it!” he shouted as he hauled her upright. He couldn’t hear her reply. He pushed her up towards the window. She went in with a convulsive struggle. One boot, or the dangling line hook, struck him in the side of the head.

  The sky was growing dark. Dazed, Moon risked a glance at the figurehead. A panel had been broken over a narrow door at the base of the carved skirts—a boarded-over exit from the belly of the ship, but that was easily repaired. The true damage was to the figurehead herself—the paint had broken away in great chips where Ivana’s first few blows had glanced, and the elegant folds of the back of the figures’ robes were splintered and shattered open. Within the dark hollow behind them was something curled and pale—like a bird’s talon, or a clawed hand. Moon started back and looked up at the window. His vision was blurring and he could not tell whether his grip held on the line.

  Ivana, still goggled, leaned out the window, both hands out. Moon jumped up, caught them and fought both elbows over the window. Ivana pulled him in by the back of his jacket, headfirst among the broken glass.

  “I’ve got frostbite,” he said, through lips that were nearly immobile. “I’m going to lose my face and my fingers. Do you destroy everything?”

  Ivana pulled put her bare hand on his face. He could not feel it. “You’ll live,” she said. She stood up, closed the window and took the eye-mask off.

  “There’s a body in my figurehead,” said Moon. He had seen its empty eyes, the clinging strands of black hair. Skin and cloth had been dried to the bones, the skin mottled with tattoos.

  “I’m going to kill him,” said Ivana.

  “Whoever it is, he’s already dead,” said Moon.

  “Not him,” said Ivana. “Fuille.
He knows we exist now.” Her face looked like Moon’s felt. She held the line hook and looked at Moon as if she wondered what would show up if she broke him open. “How did you come by this ship, Moon?”

  “A game of squares!” he protested. “I won it in a game. Fairly! A year ago! I was just out of hospital and a chance came—”

  “Then why hide its real name? The missing Ravens—you must have known the bargain was tainted, you who wish to be a pirate. Did you also know my brother was dead inside the figurehead—your own private skull and cross-bones?”

  “No!”

  “Were you going to do the same to me? You could have. All those little wires running through the ship into my veins, into my head so I could fly it for you—the fastest ship in the world? You were so happy to find what I could do.”

  “No!” said Moon. He was thawing enough to sit up. Ivana and the ship were slipping through his fingers, and he did not know how to choose. “I swear! I knew—I knew there were probably shady dealings, but there always are and I played fair. I didn’t know.” Behind her, the lines of the wires fanned out across the walls of the cabin, spread through the ship. He felt ill.

  “Left there to die,” she went on. “Staring endlessly into the well of the wind.”

  “It was a Government ship,” said Moon, although he did not really think Ivana was listening to him. “I swear—I didn’t think anyone would miss it. Not after a while. She was just an old tub, and—” and beautiful, he was going to say, but it was harder to think that now. “I swear on the ship—on my life. I didn’t know.” And he didn’t know if Evan Arden had been still alive in there. He couldn’t have known.

  “There were papers in the cargo—very technical,” she said in a colourless voice, rubbing her hand as if to rid it of a stain. “Experiments, formulae. And I know—I touched him. They kept him alive. They used the same drugs as were in Fuille’s blood, but by the end he would have had more chemicals than blood. I didn’t always get on with my brother, but still—”