Ellis stood on the deck of the Absolution,
staring into a deep, seemingly endless blackness framed by a semicircle of what
little rock and water the barge's lights could illuminate. It had been
three days since they left the Blood Forts and the view from the bow had
changed only in the most minute details: the infinite varieties of waves on the
canal, the patterns in the rocks. Very occasionally Ellis had thought he
had seen something swimming in the bow waves, but had never been able to
confirm this with a second glance.
And yet the bow was his preferred place to be, most of the time.
The atmosphere in the cramped confines below deck was growing sour
already. Three weeks spent in the hypostatick lighting of the Blood Forts
had been bad enough, but now they were stuck on the barge surrounded by such monotonous
darkness the lack of sunlight was really starting to tell on the crew.
Everyone was becoming bored, tetchy, depressed, or all of the above and
after any length of time spent in their company, Ellis found himself needing
the slightly fresher air of the deck.
Of course he wasn't alone in wanting this. Other off-duty souls
could be seen prowling the decks at all hours, some even coming to the bow and
standing silently nearby, but it seemed that none of them had the determination
to remain outside that Ellis himself had. Even Siren did not linger
longer in the darkness of the tunnel than was strictly necessary.
As Captain she was nominally busy at all times, but with the canal
taking a mostly straight path through the bedrock of Shadow, and with no change
in conditions, view or circumstances, she actually had very little to do and so
spent most of her time in her cabin, often with the Former Baron, Rockspark,
Lord Blood Dragon, Miss Barkcastle and Harker, who had formed a sort of
council, continuing to pour over books about the obelisks and debating the
various ways in which they might be found and used. Ellis had spent a
little time in these meetings as well, as had Annabella and Gulliver, but he
found that they were mostly going around in circles and didn't expect any
significant developments in their plan until they were actually at the first
obelisk.
And so he stood, day and night (although what was the difference beneath
the earth?) on the bow of the Absolution,
staring into the darkness, as if something might change.
And yet, for the first time it seemed that something was different.
Ellis couldn't put his finger on it - it wasn't anything obvious at all -
but he had a feeling that things had shifted somehow. He looked around
him and saw the same textured grey walls, the same onrushing gloom and in the
water beneath the same ripples and reflections. And yet.
His gaze lingered on the reflection of the Absolution's lights on the water the bow and found himself thinking
of Christmas lights. It hadn't occurred to him before, but the way the
glimmering reflections seemed to twinkle with each crest and trough of the
canal, fizzing into constellations along the bow wave, seemed like the
twinkling of fairy lights, strung up above a fireplace, wrapped around a tree.
He felt a pang of sorrow at the thought, like he was missing something
deep inside of himself.
He had no idea why the thought should come now. He had lost track
of what time of year it would have been back on Earth, but he was reasonably
sure he had missed Christmas by at least a couple of months and he had not, as
far as he remembered, thought about it once the whole time he had been on
Shadow, so why would the water of the canal, of all things trigger such a sense
of nostalgia towards Christmas lights? For just a second he felt the
shadow of a memory returning to him, of a Christmas tree covered in twinkling
white lights, and of presents underneath, his mother - young, smiling - and his
brother watching enviously as something was unwrapped, something glittering and
shiny and radiating excitement and-
The image was gone, fading into the mists of memory, and Ellis felt a
lump forming in his throat, a slight burning in his eyes. It was like he
had just lost something important, something special - like waking from the
best dream ever to find reality was not what you were hoping for. He
blinked, shook his head.
It's not like any of my memories are
even real, he thought, then turned away from the
bow. He had been standing there too long, he realised. He needed
sleep.
What he did not see, as he made his way aft towards
the hatch and the cabins below decks, was the little red ball of glittered
glass which floated past the barge, bobbed up and down in the eddies of the bow
wave, then disappeared into the darkness past the stern.
Gulliver Blake, perhaps more than most of the crew, was depressed.
Things had not been working out for him lately. He had thought,
when he found Siren in the Maelstrom's Heart all those many months ago, that at
last things were looking up for him. He had had a plan and a course of
action. There were things that he could do to help his beloved Captain -
that only he could do - and he wondered if, perhaps, it might finally be time
for him to step out of the shadow of his brother and get the things he really
wanted out of life.
And then it had all gone downhill from there. First there was
Ellis' obvious attraction to Siren, and signs that she reciprocated, then there
was the disaster at the Stonerib Shoals, which they barely survived and which
still gave him nightmares from time to time - the gnarled hands of the Lich,
flickering with purple lightning, reaching out towards him from the dark of
sleep... Then came the long, hot months in Searingsands, wondering if he
would ever see Siren again and knowing that his handsome brother was by her
side once more. And then there was Lakhma, the end of the world as he
knew it, followed by something worse still - Siren and Ellis, holding each
other tightly in the corridors of Varokh Vehr not long after Ellis had woken
from his brief coma, unaware that he was watching them, that they were
trampling his heart into dust on the cold stone floor.
He'd lost all motivation since then, had barely any appetite, and though
he worked like all the others on the restoration of the Absolution, his heart
was not in it. He knew he should care about finding these obelisks and
putting an end to Lakhma's reign of terror, but sometimes he wondered why.
Would it not be easier, he thought to himself in the dark of the night as
he lay swinging, restless in his hammock, for the whole world just to burn away
to nothing. Surely that was better than the hollow nothingness he felt
right now.
He spent much of his time moping, going where the
density of crew was at its lowest at any given time and as most of the others
who shared his cabin had just finished their shifts, that meant leaving
the confines of the lower decks and seeking his peace elsewhere. He knew
Ellis liked to stick to the bow, and, as much as he found him difficult
to actually dislike, seeing the construct about on deck only reminded
Gulliver of his own misery, so he stayed towards the aft of the barge,
and this night made his way all the way to the stern, where he could look out
on the gentle wake fading off into the gloom. It was calming, the water
looked cool, deep: an abyss of liquid night.
But
it also contained memories. Staring into
the inky canal, watching the Absolution’s
lights as they reflected off the wake, seemed to remind him of times gone by,
of when he and Siren and the others aboard the Ebon Crest were sailing on seas as dark as this, being chased by
other pirates, raiding ancient treasures.
For some reason a particular memory swam to the surface of his mind,
clear as if it had happened yesterday.
It was a time when he and Siren were alone, trapped on the wreckage of a
small boat they had taken out to investigate an island they had known was
inhabited by a gang of scurrilous rogues – knew because they had lost half
their treasure to them the week before – and had been scouting their hideout in
preparation for a full assault. The Crest had not come with them, to allow
for stealth, but of course they’d been found and had barely escaped with their
lives. Their small boat didn’t quite
make it, however, and soon they were clutching at planks as dusk arrived and a
pod of small, worryingly curious velocignaths began to circle them. The Crest
had not arrived until late into the night, by which time Siren had had to fend
the vicious sea creatures off with sections of the very wreckage that was
keeping them afloat. It had been a
terrifying night and yet, spending it alone with Siren had made it special
somehow.
Gulliver
blinked. He could have sworn that, for
just a moment, something had flicked its tail through the Absolution’s wake – something suspiciously velocignath shaped. He stared at the point where he thought he
had seen it, but after a long moment decided it must have been his
imagination. After all, who wouldn’t go
mad stuck in this darkness? He was about
to turn away, to return to his hammock and get the rest he realised he probably
needed after all, when he saw it again, but not just a flick of tail, this
time: a whole velocignath arced through the wake, revealing its long line of
spiked dorsal fins rising out of its silvered back. And then there was another, and another, and
another, until he was sure there must be dozens of them surrounding the ship,
and not just tiny ones like those that had circled him and Siren that night,
but some of the really big ones – ship eating monsters.
Gulliver’s
melancholy melted away instantly to be replaced by a sudden, deep and terrible
panic. I ‘ave to warn the others, he thought, but no sooner had he done so
than a bell rang out across the deck and crewmembers began swarming out of
their cabins. One of them ran nearby,
asked what was going on and Gulliver was about to reply, ‘we’re under attack!’
when another sailor answered for him.
“The
lookouts have sighted something. There’s
a cave ahead, filled with bright light and… and they think it looks like snow!”
And
that was when the first velocignath rammed the barge.
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