It came out with a very loud popping sound, followed immediately afterwards by a ten-foot-high shower of sparks and a loud ticking noise as if a large and noisy clock had started up deep within the ball.
Arthur started frantically backstroking away from it, his body almost reacting faster than his brain, which had rapidly processed the fact that this floating ball was some sort of floating bomb — a mine — and it was going to explode.
A few seconds later, with Arthur only ten yards away, the buoy did explode. But it was not the lethal blast Arthur feared. There was a bright flash, and a rush of air above Arthur’s head, but no deadly rain of fragments.
Smoke poured out of the ball, dark black smoke that coiled up into the air in a very orderly fashion, quite unlike any smoke Arthur had seen before. It started to whip about like a snake, dancing all over the place. Eventually its ‘head’ connected with its ‘tail’ to form a giant smoke ring that hovered ten feet above the buoy, which was still intact, though its upper half had broken open into multiple segments like a lotus.
The smoke ring slowly closed in on itself to become an inky cloud that spun about for a minute or so, then it abruptly burst apart, turning into eight jet-black seabirds that shrieked ‘Thief!’ above Arthur’s head before they each flew off in a different direction, covering the eight points of the compass rose.
Arthur was too tired to worry about what the seabirds were doing, or who they might be alerting. All he cared about was the fact that now the top half of the buoy was open, he could pull himself up on it and have a rest.
Arthur had only just enough energy to drag himself over and into the buoy. It was full of water, but he could sit in it quite comfortably and rest. That was all he wanted to do for a while. Rest.
But after only twenty minutes, according to his still-backwards but otherwise reliable and waterproof watch, Arthur found that he had rested enough. Though there was still no visible sun, it felt like one was beating down on him. He was really hot, and he was sure he was getting sunburned and that his tongue had started to swell from lack of water. He wished he’d managed to keep a sheet from the bed to use as a sunshade. He took his dressing gown off and made that into a makeshift turban, but it didn’t really help.
At that point, Arthur started to hope that whoever the birds were supposed to alert would show up. Even if they thought he was a thief. That implied there was something to steal here, which didn’t seem to be the case. The buoy was just a big, empty, floating ball with the top hemisphere opened up. There was nothing inside it except Arthur.
Another baking, uncomfortable hour passed. Arthur’s broken leg began to ache again, probably because the painkillers he’d had in the hospital were wearing off. The high-tech cast didn’t seem to be operational anymore and Arthur could see distinct holes in it now.
Arthur picked at one of the holes and grimaced. The cast was falling apart. He was definitely sunburned as well, the backs of his hands turning pink, as if trying to match the bright red stain on his palms. According to Arthur’s watch it was nine o’clock at night, but there was no change in the light. Without being able to see any sun, he couldn’t tell whether night was approaching. He wasn’t even sure there would be a night. There was in the Lower House, but that didn’t mean anything. There might not be any relief from the constant heat.
He wondered if he should try and swim somewhere, but dismissed the idea as quickly as it came up. He was lucky to have found this buoy. Or perhaps it wasn’t luck, it was the Mariner’s disc that had led him here. In any case, Arthur couldn’t swim for more than half an hour at the most, and there wasn’t much chance of finding land in that time. Better to sit here and hope that the smoky seabirds brought someone.
Two hours later, Arthur felt a much cooler breeze waft across the back of his neck. He opened his puffy eyes to see a shadow passing across the sky. A veil of darkness advanced in a line across the horizon. Stars, or suitable facsimiles of them, began to twinkle as the light faded before the approaching line of night.
The wind and the lapping sea grew cold. Arthur turned his turban back into a dressing gown, shivered, and hunched up into a tighter ball. Clearly he was going to be sunburned during the day and then frozen at night. Either one would kill him, so not dying of hunger and thirst was no great bonus.
As he had that thought, Arthur saw another star. A fallen star, quite close to the sea, and moving towards him. It took another moment for his heat-addled brain to recognise that it was in fact a light.
A light fixed to the bowsprit of a ship.
THE FALLEN STAR grew closer, and the ship became more visible, though it was still little more than a dark outline in the fading light. A rather rotund outline, for this ship looked to be very broad, wallowing its way through the waves. It had only two masts, rather than the three of the ship that had picked up Leaf, and its square-rigged sails were definitely not of the luminous variety.
Arthur didn’t care. He stood up gingerly, his muscles cramping from weariness and confinement in the buoy, and waved frantically.
‘Help! I’m over here! Help!’
There was no answering shout from the ship. It rolled and plunged towards him, but he could see some of the sails being furled, and there were Denizens rushing about on the deck. Somebody was shouting orders, and others were repeating or questioning them. All in all, it didn’t appear very organised.
Particularly as the ship sailed right past him. Arthur couldn’t believe it. He shouted himself hoarse and almost fell out of the buoy from jumping up and down. But the ship kept on its way, till Arthur could only see the glow of the single lantern that hung from its stern rail.
Arthur watched till the light disappeared into the darkness, then he sat down, totally defeated. He rested his head in his hands and fought back a sob.
I am not going to cry
, he told himself.
I will work
something out. I am the Master of the Lower House and the
Far Reaches. I am not going to die in a buoy in some rotten sea!
Arthur took a deep breath and lifted his head up.
There will be another ship. There must be another ship.
Arthur was clutching at this hope when he saw the light again, followed by another.
Two lights!
They were a hundred feet apart and perhaps two hundred yards away. It took Arthur only a second to understand that he was looking at the bow and stern lights of the ship. He’d lost sight of the stern light as the vessel turned, but now it was heaved-to, broadside on to him.
A few moments later, he heard the slap of oars in the water, and Denizens chanting as they rowed a small boat towards him. Arthur couldn’t make out the words till they were quite close, and the light of a bull’s-eye lantern flickered across the water, searching for Arthur and the buoy.
‘Flotsam floats when all is sunk.
Jetsam thrown isn’t just junk.
Coughs and colds and bright red sores
Waiting for us, so bend yer oars!’
The yellow beam of light swept over Arthur, then backtracked to shine directly in his face. Arthur raised his arm to shield his eyes. The light wasn’t bright enough to blind, but it made it hard to see the boat and its crew. There were at least a dozen Denizens aboard, most of them rowing.
‘Back oars!’ came a shout from the darkness. ‘Yarko was right! There
is
a Nithling on that buoy! Make ready your crossbows!’
‘I’m not a Nithling!’ shouted Arthur. ‘I’m . . . I’m a distressed sailor!’
‘A what?’
‘A distressed sailor,’ replied Arthur. He had read that somewhere. Sailors were supposed to help one another.
‘What ship? And what are you doing on that treasure marker?’
‘Uh, my ship was the
Steely Bed
. It sank. I swam here.’
There was a muttering aboard the boat. Arthur couldn’t clearly hear all the words, but he heard ‘claim,’ ‘ours,’ ‘stick ’im and sink ’im,’ and the sound of someone being knocked on the head and grunting in pain. He hoped it was the Denizen who said ‘stick ’im,’ since he was fairly sure he was the ‘’im’ being referred to.
‘Give way,’ shouted the Denizen in charge. The oars dipped into the sea again, and the boat moved forward. As it came alongside the buoy, Arthur got his first real look at the crew, with the Denizen holding the bull’s-eye lantern opening its shutters to spread the light around.
They were not a good-looking bunch. There were eight men and five women. They might have started with the usual handsome features of Denizens, but the great majority of them had eye patches, livid scars across their faces, and an illustrated catalogue of tattoos, ranging from ships to storms to skulls and snakes, up and down their forearms, on cheeks and foreheads and bared midriffs. They wore many different styles of clothing, all in bright colours, the single common feature being a wide leather belt that supported a cutlass and knife. Half of them also had red knitted caps, and the leader, a broad-shouldered male Denizen with scarlet sunbursts tattooed on his cheeks, wore a leather Napoleon hat that looked a little too small for him.
He smiled at Arthur, revealing a mouth with most of its teeth missing. Of the remaining four or five, three were capped in gold.
Pirates
, Arthur figured.
But there was something strangely non-aggressive about them too. Something that reminded Arthur of people playing dress-up. Surely real pirates would just kill him without a second thought, not sit quietly looking at him. And one of them was drawing a picture of the scene with a charcoal stick in a sketchbook.
‘The
Steelibed
,’ said the leader. ‘Can’t say I’ve heard of her. When did she sink? Carrying any cargo?’
‘Maybe a day ago,’ said Arthur cautiously. ‘Not much cargo. Um, cotton and stuff.’
‘And stuff,’ repeated the leader, with a wink at Arthur. ‘Well, with a treasure marker in front of us, we’ll not bother with ‘cotton and stuff’ if there’s anything below. The question is, are you claiming salvage?’
‘Uh, I don’t know,’ said Arthur cautiously. ‘Maybe. I might.’
‘Well, if you’re not sure, then it don’t matter!’ declared the leader, with a laugh that was echoed by the crew. ‘We’ll just have a look below and if there’s anything left, we’ll have it up. Then we’ll be on our way, and you can get on with your own business.’
‘Hold on!’ cried Arthur. ‘Take me with you!’
‘Lizard, take a line and have a glance under the buoy,’ said the leader to one of the crew, a small woman who had blue scales tattooed all over her face. At least Arthur
hoped
they were tattoos and not actual scales. She undid her belt, kicked off her boots, and quickly dived over the side with a rope held between her teeth.
‘Please, I need to get to land,’ said Arthur. ‘Somewhere I can make a phone call.’
‘Ain’t no phone calls in the Border Sea,’ said one of the Denizens. ‘Exchange got flooded and they never built a new one on the high ground.’
‘Shut yer trap, One-Ear,’ instructed the leader. He turned back to Arthur. ‘You want to come aboard the
Moth
as a passenger, then?’
‘That’s your ship?’ asked Arthur. ‘The
Moth
?’
‘Aye, the
Moth
,’ replied a Denizen who had a shark’s toothy mouth tattooed around his own. ‘What’s wrong with that? Moths can be extremely frightening. If you get trapped in a cupboard with a whole passel of moths —’ ‘I didn’t mean anything bad about the name,’ said Arthur. He thought quickly. ‘It’s just I was surprised to be picked up by such a famous ship.’
‘What?’ asked one of the other Denizens. ‘The
Moth
?’
‘Yes. Such a famous ship and its crew of . . . uh . . . such renowned pirates!’
Arthur’s speech was met by a sudden silence. Then the crew of the boat erupted, falling over themselves as they tried to run out the oars again. All of them shouted at once:
‘Pirates! Where?! What pirates?! Back to the ship!’
‘Hold hard!’ roared the leader. He waded in among the crew, slapping them open-handed across the backs of their heads till they subsided onto the slats. Then he turned to Arthur.
‘I ain’t never heard anything so insulting. Us! Pirates! We’re Salvagers, and proud of it. We don’t take anything that hasn’t been thrown away first or sunk and come up. Or treasures left in the open sea.’
‘Sorry,’ said Arthur. ‘It was just the eye patches and the clothes and the tattoos and everything . . . I was confused. But I really would like to be a passenger.’
‘Just because we’re only Salvagers doesn’t mean we can’t dress nice and wear an eye patch if we want,’ muttered Shark-Mouth. ‘Or two eye patches, come to that.’
‘Can’t wear two, you idiot,’ said another Denizen.
‘Can so,’ replied the first. ‘Get some of that one-way leather from the Doctor —’
‘Shut up!’ roared the leader. He turned back to Arthur and said, ‘I’m not saying you can be a passenger, right? I’m only the Second Mate of the
Moth
. Sunscorch is my name. But we’ll take you back to the ship. The Captain can decide your fate.’
‘Thanks!’ said Arthur. ‘My name’s Arth —’ He stopped halfway through. Better to keep his name to himself, he thought.
‘Arth? Well, get aboard Arth.’
Two of the closer Denizens held the boat against the buoy, and another one helped Arthur across.
‘Gettin’ yer leg ready to cut off, are yer?’ asked the helping Denizen with a grin. He slapped Arthur’s cast and waved his own leg, showing off a wooden peg that started below the knee. ‘They grow back too quick, though, I’m telling yer.’
Arthur grimaced at the sight and quickly suppressed a flash of fear that his leg might have to be cut off. And his wouldn’t grow back, unlike a Denizen’s.
‘I’ve had this one chopped a dozen times,’ continued the peg-legged crew member. ‘Why, I remember —’ He stopped in mid-sentence and recoiled, staring at Arthur’s red-stained hands.
‘He’s got the Red Hand!’
‘Feverfew’s mark!’
‘We’re all doomed!’
‘Quiet!’ roared Sunscorch. He peered down at Arthur.