The Ship Beyond Time Page 11

  “Or it might have been what had to happen—”

  “To keep the world from unraveling?” Blake searched my face for answers I did not have. “Do you think we’re here for a reason, Miss Song?”

  My mouth twisted like a rope—I knew the reason I’d brought us here, but Blake gave the word a shine beyond self-interest. “We have to wait for Crowhurst to return to find out for certain.”

  “It seems that way.” Blake folded his arms. “But perhaps we can still track down the madman.”

  I looked at him, surprised. “We can?”

  “Aren’t you curious how he knows the ending of a story yet untold?”

  “Of course I am,” I said. “I just didn’t realize you’d want to come with me.”

  “Well, I can’t very well let you keep all the adventures to yourself, Miss Song.” He offered me his arm then, and I took it. Together, we started out across the wharf, up the Grand Rue toward the castle.

  It was the same route I’d taken last night, but the town was far more colorful in the light of day. The sun brought out the bright hues of the doors, enameled in rich blues and reds, and above the street swung the carved and painted signs for hat makers and haberdashers, porcelains and parfumeries—luxuries in this age, especially for a town so small. Where did this wealth come from? I saw no factories, no sign of industry. Then again, Ker-Ys was supposed to be a utopia.

  The streets themselves were quiet, and most of the shops were still shuttered this early, but curtains were being drawn back from the windows in the living spaces above, and there was the feeling in the air—a murmur of voices, a scent of milk and smoke and rising bread—that people were stirring. As we turned into the square, bells in the cathedral began to ring.

  The château was even lovelier under the sun than the moon: a profusion of slender towers, lacy with tracery and topped with conical slate roofs. My eye went to the upper window, but it was dark. Still, the entire atmosphere was halcyon, and the events of last night seemed far away, almost unreal, like a distant ship on the horizon.

  “No madman,” Blake murmured.

  “Maybe he wandered off. But . . .” I scanned the square. Had it only been a strange nightmare? An odd dream? No—the old book was there, lying mangled on the cobbles in the shade of the gatehouse. As I knelt to pick up the cracked leather covers, Blake grasped the bars and rattled the portcullis. It barely moved, although I could hear the faint clanking of chain in the mechanisms.

  “This gate would keep all but the smallest monsters out,” he said.

  “Or in.”

  “Safest that way. What have you got there?”

  I showed him the lettering on the book cover, stamped into the skin. L’HISTOIRE DE LA VILLE D’YS.

  “A history book?” He raised an eyebrow. “The work of a revisionist, perhaps?”

  “That’s not funny. This book was priceless.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Song. It’s only that I can understand being enraged by history.” He knelt to pluck up a handful of scraps; they had drifted like fallen petals into the corner of the gatehouse. “You’re right, of course,” he said softly, sorting through the pieces. Gold leaf shone in the morning sun; the book had been lovingly illuminated. “It was beautiful work.”

  “Don’t bother.” I opened my hand; the empty cover fell to the ground, a dead thing. “It’s beyond repair.”

  “I know. But some of these are interesting. Look here.” He smoothed a crumpled piece of vellum against his thigh and tilted it toward me. “Seems like a diagram of the island.”

  It was only a partial, but the design was still clear: the circular seawalls, the coil of the Grand Rue. But another path stretched across the city, leading to the sea wall and branching through the town. I traced the line with my finger. “Sewer system, maybe?”

  “Perhaps. At the king’s palace in Honolulu, there were rumors of secret underground passages. But look here.” He tapped the paper; in the center of the castle, a dark circle was labeled LE TROU.

  “Le trou . . .” I caught my breath when the meaning came to me. “The pit?”

  Blake looked up at me through his lashes. “Maybe your madman . . . wasn’t. And look, one of the tunnels passes right by it.” He gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Shall we?”

  “Shall we what?” I stared at him; there was a gleam in his eye. “Blake.”

  “Come, Miss Song! We’ve got to wait for Crowhurst anyway. What else have you got planned?”

  “What if there actually is a monster in the castle?”

  “What if there’s actually a man in the pit?” His question brought me up short; he saw his victory in my hesitation. “I thought you loved adventure. But if you’re frightened, I’ll protect you.”

  My eyes narrowed—was he patronizing me? Then again, I did have the gun; I could protect us both. “Let me see that.”

  “Here.” He handed me the slip of paper; it trembled in my hand. The path was a shadowy line running underneath the entire city; dark squares showed entrances at the cathedral, the castle, and near the docks. It made sense—castles and sanctuaries usually had exit routes in case of invasion.

  “It’s not very detailed,” I said dubiously. “It might take a bit of searching.”

  “Then we’d best get started. Shall we try the cathedral first?” He started across the square to the pile of towering granite. I jogged to catch up, and when I did, I was glad we’d taken a closer look.

  From across the square, the cathedral had looked like a typical French Gothic house of God, but closer up, it seemed the god it housed might have been Poseidon. The high arches were graceful as anemones and studded with gargoyles—no, not gargoyles, but sea creatures. Stone mermaids made downspouts out of shells held in their outstretched hands; urchins encrusted the archivolts, and deep-sea fish with enormous teeth took the role of grotesques in the galleries. Above it all, the great bronze bells gleamed, tucked into the towers like great pearls in giant oysters. But the processional doors set in the arched portals were heavy oak and banded with iron, and all three were shut tight. Around the side of the building, a smaller entrance was no different.

  Blake wasn’t deterred. “Back to the docks, then.”

  We took last night’s discarded torches from an empty fishing boat, and I stopped at the ship to slip a book of matches into my pocket. Then we crossed to the east side of the wharf. According to the map, the passage ran directly beneath a stone boathouse opposite the tavern. The building was decorated with old fishtails nailed over the doors, like trophies. They were huge, easily a yard across.

  “Marlin?” Blake said with a quizzical glance.

  “They don’t live this far north.” But what did? Sturgeon, of course, but the lobes of the caudal fin were each the same size. What was it Gwen had said? Strange fish in the water. “Whatever it was, it must have been huge.”

  “No wonder the fishermen look so rough.”

  We walked around the building; the side along the Grand Rue was devoted to a fish market, but it was still early, the gates closed, the fishermen abed. But there were bloody puddles of saltwater on the stones near the loading door, and we found it unbarred; the lucky trollers must have hauled their catch this way last night.

  Stepping carefully on the slick stone, I followed Blake into the darkened market. The smell of sour brine tickled my nose, and my breath whitened in the gloom; it was even colder inside than out. I eased the door shut and lit the torches; orange firelight waltzed arm in arm with the shadows.

  The room was cavernous, with barrels of salted herring lining the far wall, and swaybacked wooden tables holding fresh mackerel, their eyes like cloudy marbles. From inside a nearby barrel, I could hear the click-clack of crustaceans climbing over one another, claws scrabbling against the wood.

  Meandering through the cool darkness, our shadows crept behind us. “We’re looking for a tunnel of some sort,” Blake said. “Perhaps a stairway leading down.”

  “Or a trapdoor.” I watched my feet as we wa
lked. The torchlight glittered off fish scales scattered across the stained flagstones. Lifting my skirt, I stepped over a curved gutter, icy with old blood; it ran toward a dark drain in the floor. Squinting, I tried to see inside, but the shadows were too deep and it wasn’t wide enough to climb through, even if it hadn’t been clotted with offal.

  We passed bushel baskets piled high with the fruits of the sea: clams, mussels, sea lettuce, and here, something silvery and fibrous that I did not recognize. Lifting my torch, the flame shone on a mound of silky filament, the strands the color of spun moonlight.

  Blake glanced over. “Too fine for linen.”

  “And the climate’s wrong for silkworms.” I drew a single thread from the basket; it was at least a yard long, and the thickness of a spiderweb. “It’s sea silk,” I said, breathless as the stories came to me. “Or sea wool, in ancient Rome. Apparently a glove woven from it could fit inside a thimble. The Egyptians called it byssus and used it to wrap the bodies of their god kings.”

  He reached out in wonder, running a finger along the strand. “But what is it?”

  “The Chinese sometimes called it mermaid’s hair.”

  We stared for a moment at the pile of silvery fiber. Now it made sense to me—the luxury of imported spices and fine fashion on the Grand Rue—and I could nearly hear Blake’s thoughts as we both considered the meaning of the fishtails nailed to the boathouse wall.

  “Right,” he said briskly, wiping his hand on his jacket. “Let’s keep looking for that passage.”

  Behind the fish market was the boathouse proper. The floor here was cracked; the flagstones rocked underfoot. Along the walls facing the dock, weak sunlight crept through the doorframes of the loading gates, hanging heavy on their hinges, but the light faded quickly into gloom. Haphazard crates made a dark maze out of the wide room; in corners, coils of rope and buckets of hardened tar gathered dust waiting for repairs. A rotting dinghy lay in the middle of the floor, its hull stove in by rocks. Had its crew been able to bail long enough to return to port? Or had the boat floated in, upside down and empty, on the tide?

  We searched the walls, looking for a door, secret or otherwise, but found nothing of interest until we reached the back corner. “Good god!”

  At Blake’s shout, I leapt back; by his feet was a child’s skull. No . . .

  “What on earth?”

  At first I’d thought it was human, but the teeth were like an eel’s: rows of slender needles. I picked it up and held it to the light. The bone was thin, almost translucent, like the nacreous scales of a fish.

  My palms were slick with sweat, but Blake took it from me gently, turning it toward the light. “There are more things in heaven and earth,” he breathed.

  “That’s definitely not Yorick.” I shuddered—I couldn’t help it. But Blake was staring in wonder. “You take very easily to such foreign waters.”

  His answering smile was a little ghoulish in the torchlight. “I wouldn’t be much of an explorer if I found myself frightened by the unknown. What about you, Miss Song? Doesn’t mystery tempt you?”

  “I’ve always loved seeing what was just over the horizon. Still . . .” I considered the skull as he tucked it back into the corner. “I think I preferred the secret beaches and the hidden waterfalls.”

  “Perhaps you and I could go back to Hawaii someday.” He straightened his jacket. “Do you still have a map that would work?”

  “Honolulu is my native time. I can get there through the Margins. Of course, after . . . after what happened, I’d likely be recognized. I couldn’t go back without—”

  “Without changing the past?”

  “Without a disguise, I was going to say.”

  “Ah.” Blake was watching me again. The little pool of torchlight cupped us, drawing us close together, and the warmth of his body was comforting in the chill. Then it struck me—he’d said “you and I.”

  I blinked at him; he smiled. Abruptly, I took a step back onto the uneven flagstones; I had no warning at all before they cracked and crumbled away under my feet.

  I fell right after, down into the dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Miss Song?”

  “Hnnngh.”

  “Can you speak? Say something!”

  As the sharp pain of my landing faded, I squinted up through sudden tears at the bright blur of the hole in the ceiling—which had recently been the floor. I had fallen straight down and landed in a heap.

  “Miss Song!”

  “Yes.” The word hissed out of me; my ribs had hit something hard—a stone? No, a brick. I touched my side gingerly; it throbbed, but the pain wasn’t acute. “I think . . .” Slowly I straightened out my legs, pushing aside bits of the broken flagstone; though I was shaken and sore, everything seemed to work. “I’m all right.”

  I clambered to my feet; as I did, my hip twanged. I winced, putting my hand against my side. There was a hard lump there—the gun. Ugh. What a bruise that would make.

  Brushing dirt from my clothes, I found something wet had wicked through the wool of my cloak. The sandy ground was quite damp here, so close to the harbor—and under the fish market. My torch had been snuffled out in the fall. Wrinkling my nose, I sniffed at the stain, but thankfully it was only saltwater, though it had wet my book of matches.

  “Give me a moment.” Blake’s head was silhouetted against the light, perhaps ten feet overhead. “I’ll be back with another torch.”

  He disappeared, taking the light with him, and the darkness wrapped around me like a shroud. I swallowed. Stretching out my arms, I could barely see as far as my fingertips. It seemed to take a very long time for him to return.

  “Stand aside!”

  I retreated to the edge of the circle of light. The shadows leaped back as Blake dropped a makeshift flambeau, a sailcloth wrapped around a scrap of board. I snatched it up from the silty floor and brandished it against the cowering dark.

  The tunnel was tubelike, with a barrel ceiling and a ledge running along the wall at about the height of my shoulders. High above, drains were dark pockets in the brick. It must have been a sewer, after all, although now the waterways were fairly dry. The stones here were rough, and sections of the wall were made of crumbling mortar. I peered upward—the ribs of the vault had weakened under the hole. More bricks were scattered on the floor around me; I was lucky I hadn’t hit my head. “Well,” I said, picking up the torch I’d dropped and lighting it from the flame dying on the canvas. “I’ve found the secret passage.”

  “Do you see a way up?” Blake’s voice echoed down through the tunnel. I turned in a slow circle, looking for a door, a stair, anything.

  “Not yet,” I called up. But the ledge was clearly a walkway, made so workers could travel above the waterline; there must have been a way to reach it that didn’t involve falling through a broken floor.

  “There was a rope in the corner,” Blake shouted. “I’ll be right back.”

  Bits of rubble fell from the ceiling as he left. I stayed beneath the hole, in case anything else was going to come down. Then I frowned, lifting the torch; far down the tunnel, was that another path, branching off on the right? In spite of myself, the shadows called to me; I hadn’t lied to Blake when I’d told him I was tempted by mystery.

  It wasn’t long before a rope slithered down from the room above. Blake called down after it. “Can you climb, or shall I lift you?”

  “What?” I tilted my head back to look at him—gingerly; I was still a bit dizzy. “Neither!”

  He stared down at me. In the flickering light, his concern made sharp angles of his cheeks. “Are you well enough to go on?”

  “Just come down!”

  After a moment, he dropped his own torch at my feet. The dark pulled back farther as he slid down the rope. But when he reached the bottom, he picked up the torch and tipped his hat back on the crown of his head. Then he took my chin gently, peering closely into my eyes, first one, then the other. “What are you doing, Blake?”

>   “I’m making sure you’re all right,” he murmured softly; his breath stirred in my hair. I watched his lips curve into a half smile. “You don’t look concussed. Most likely you’ll live.” I laughed, but in the dark it sounded nervous. Just as I was about to pull away, he released my chin and turned to stare into the dark. The glow from the fire made his eyes gleam. “This reminds me of the lava tunnels. Back in Hawaii. You can get lost down there without a map.”

  “Good thing we have a cartographer,” I said brusquely. “Which way toward the castle?”

  Opening his sketchbook, he frowned at the scrap of paper, and then up toward the ceiling. After a moment spent consulting an internal compass, he pointed down the passage. “Down here.”

  Firelight played across the brick as we walked, flitting around corners, scampering along the ledge, and lunging into branching tunnels from the main. I paused to inspect one. “There’s an archway along the edge. Are those stairs leading up?”

  “I see them. But . . .” Blake looked back in the direction we’d come, though I’d lost sight of the rope in the darkness. Still, he shook his head, making a mark on the page. “We’re only at three hundred paces.”

  Down here the air was still, though there was a rhythmic sound, a hollow metal drumming like the washing of the waves against a steel hull. It grew steadily louder as we traveled along the damp sand in the canal, walking slowly enough that he could add detail to his map. His shoulder brushed mine; was it an accident? Blake seemed completely focused on the sketchbook. But there was only one way to know. I licked my lips and summoned my courage. “Do you wish things had gone differently?” I said softly. “In Hawaii?”

  “Of course I do.” His answer was vague—as my question had been. I tried again.

  “Between us, I mean?”

  He lifted his head from his book. “Do you?”

  I hesitated—for all my regrets, what would I have changed? “I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”

  “That’s a kindness.” He looked back down to make another mark on the map. “But how, exactly?”