Part 18 (2/2)

Pazel shot Neeps a cautious smile. 'You did like her, eh?'

Neeps blinked at him. 'Who, Marila?' he said, flus.h.i.+ng. 'Don't be a clod, mate, I barely spoke to her. I just think she might have come in handy, that's all. She sure did on the Haunted Coast.'

'She seemed blary smart,' Pazel ventured.

Neeps shrugged. 'She was just a village girl. She probably had even less schooling than I did.'

A note of bitterness had crept into Neeps' voice. Pazel stared at the wall to hide his unease. You could be both smart and unschooled, of course, and he wanted to say so. But how would that sound coming from someone who'd gone to city schools, and been tutored by Ignus Chadfallow?

No, he couldn't say anything of the kind. And before he could find another way to break the silence it was broken for him by a pair of tarboys approaching from portside. Swift and Saroo were nicknamed 'the Jockeys,' for the brothers claimed to be great riders. They were nimble, quiet boys with sharp glances. Rumour held that their father had been a horse thief in Uturphe, and was shot dead in the saddle on a stolen mare.

'Give us them tools,' said Swift. 'We're to relieve you, Uskins' orders. You're wanted topside, double quick.'

'Wanted by Uskins?' said Pazel with a groan.

'Not exactly,' said Saroo.

Neeps lathered boiling resin on a final seam. 'Who wants us, then?'

Saroo leaned close. 'It's Oggosk,' he said. 'Lady Oggosk. She wants to see you in her cabin. Uskins was just pa.s.sing the word.'

Pazel and Neeps traded startled glances. 'Oggosk?' said Pazel. 'What can she want with us?'

The Jockeys shrugged, in a way that made it clear they would rather not know. 'Just don't keep her waiting,' Swift advised. 'One dirty look from that witch could kill a buffalo.'

Pazel and Neeps handed over their tools. But even as they turned to leave cries broke out in the next compartment.

'You give that blary thing back to me, c.o.xilrane!'

'Can't, sir, can't!'

'Blast you to Bodendel! It's mine!'

All down the pa.s.sage boys were turning from their work. The voices drew nearer. Suddenly Firecracker Frix galloped into the compartment in a kind of terror, his long beard flapping and a notebook of some sort tucked under his arm. Behind him came Fiffengurt, barefoot and red with fury, shaking his fists above his head.

'Thief, thief!' he roared. 'I'll tear out your d.a.m.ned beard by the roots!'

Frix apparently believed him: he was running for his life. But as he drew even with Pazel he took a bad step. Groping for balance, his palm slapped the last spot on the wall Neeps had painted with resin. There was an audible sizzle. Frix screamed; the notebook flew from his hands, slid across the deck - and stopped at the feet of Mr Uskins, who had just entered the pa.s.sage from the opposite side.

'What's all this, Second Mate?' he snapped.

'My h-hand--'

Uskins scooped up the book and examined it suspiciously.

'Now, Uskins, don't involve yourself,' shouted Fiffengurt, closing the distance.

Uskins put his back to the quartermaster. 'Mr Frix?' he demanded.

'It's his p-private journal, sir,' said Frix, still shuddering on the deck. 'Captain Rose knew about it, somehow. He sent me to take it from his quarters - it wasn't my idea, Mr Fiffengurt! See here, he gave me the master key and all! Whoopsy!'

Frix dropped the key and scrambled after it. Fiffengurt kicked his prominently displayed backside, then reached out to Uskins for the book. Uskins ignored the gesture. He had opened the journal and was flipping through the sheets of neat blue handwriting.

'There must be two hundred pages,' he said. 'You've kept yourself busy, Quartermaster.'

'It's none of your business,' said Fiffengurt. 'Hand it over.'

'”I doubt I have ever missed her more,”' Uskins read aloud with mock reverence. ' Uskins read aloud with mock reverence. '”All the beauties of this world are dust without my Annabel.” '

'Devil !'

Fiffengurt lunged for the journal, but Uskins kept his body between the quartermaster and his notebook. He was very nearly laughing. 'Carry on, Frix,' he said. 'I'll see that this reaches the captain.'

'But it's my blary property!' shouted Fiffengurt.

Uskins looked at him with naked malice. 'I am glad to hear you say so. First, because you will be held to account for whatever libel or mutinous matter I find in these pages.'

' You You find?' said Neeps. find?' said Neeps.

'And second,' Uskins continued, 'because to keep such a journal is a crime in itself.' He backed in a circle, holding off the quartermaster with one hand and waving the open book above his head with the other. 'Except for letters home, an officer's every written word is the property of the Chathrand Trading Company. Imperial law, Fiffengurt. We'll see how Captain Rose decides to punish--Ach!'

Pazel had crept around behind him and grabbed the journal. Uskins was caught off guard and stumbled over the resin-can, which oozed bubbling across the deck. But he kept his grip on the book. Furious, he slammed Pazel against the wall with his shoulder, even as Neeps and Fiffengurt grabbed at the book themselves.

'The lamp! The lamp!' cried the other boys.

Fiffengurt looked up: Uskins must have struck the oil lamp with a wild swing of the notebook. The peg on which it hung had cracked, and looked set to break at any moment. Walrus-oil lamps were st.u.r.dy but not indestructible, and fire in a pa.s.sage awash with flammable resin was too grim a thought to contemplate. Fiffengurt let go of his journal and grabbed the lamp with both hands.

Uskins gave a vicious, whole-bodied tug. Pazel and Neeps held fast - and the journal ripped at the spine. Man and boys fell apart, each side gripping half the ruined book.

The first mate looked at what he held. With an approving snicker he jumped to his feet and ran off along the corridor, leaving sticky resin bootprints.

'That pig got almost everything,' said Neeps, riffling the mangled pages. 'This is the empty half of the book.'

'Are you hurt, lads?'

They a.s.sured him they weren't. Fiffengurt inspected them to be sure, moving slowly, as if in a daze. At last he turned to his beloved journal. Out of two hundred pages he was left with three.

'I'm so sorry, Mr Fiffengurt,' said Pazel.

The quartermaster stared at the crumpled sheets, as if expecting them to multiply. Slowly his jaw tightened, his teeth clenched and his hands began to shake. The tarboys shuffled backwards. Fiffengurt turned on his heel and bellowed: 'Uskins! Son of a leprous limp-teated dog-spurned side-alley wh.o.r.e!'

The Oggosk, Eighteenth d.u.c.h.ess of Tiros.h.i.+, had for reasons never well explained made her quarters in a little room inside the forecastle house, between the smithy and the chicken coops.

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