8. The Assassin in the Night #2
“Was your captain dropped on his head as an infant, by any chance?” he asks, dryly.
Instantly, Cosmer is on his feet.
“Never insult Dezeeves in front of me again,” he breathes.
The whole room has fallen silent. The rowdy soldiers have stopped their conversation to watch us.
“Cosmer,” Riss hisses, flicking towards them with her eyes. “Sit down.”
Slowly – still glaring at Drake – he does.
I decide I need to find out more if I’m to better understand my fate, and how I could possibly avoid it.
“There have been other prisoners of war on this ship, haven’t there?”
“Correct,” Riss answers.
“Well, did they Integrate?”
“More have FI’d than haven’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some weren’t seen again. Most are still here.”
“How many?”
She shrugs. “They just wear standard uniform once they’re FI’d, so it’s hard to keep track. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe?”
It doesn’t make any sense.
What is Dezeeves doing to these soldiers? It sounds impossible.
It sounds like…
Magic.
Could he have access to some kind of blood magic? This wouldn’t be a minor magic. This would have to be something incredibly powerful. Maybe even a talent from the Queen’s immediate family.
“And those who weren’t seen again?” I dare to ask.
Riss narrows her grey eyes. “Do I need to answer that?”
Fair enough.
Drake asks, glancing at Cosmer, “And their keepers? What would happen to them?”
“Any failed mission,” she starts, “Could be Negligence. Which would get you a Trial on Deck.”
A trial.
Which could lead to –
“They could kill you too for this?” I gasp.
She pinches her nose. “Yes. Executions all around. Are we happy?”
She doesn’t wait for us to respond. Just yanks out toothbrushes, soap and paste and bundles of black clothing from the crate. “These are your uniforms. I had to guess your sizes. If they don’t fit – tough.”
She pushes them towards us. Even though she’s shorter than us all, she somehow seems to look down at us as she says, “In an emergency, your station would be Deck 3, with us – starboard. Wait for us, or instructions from other officers. Bring your oxygen masks with you – they’ll be in your cabins, under your beds.
Which leads me onto the last thing.” She takes an uneasy breath.
It makes me nervous.
“Sleeping arrangements. Cosmer and I will have to move out of our officer cabins. Standard cabins either sleep two or four. Keepers are expected to stay with their prisoners to monitor them. Even at night.”
I wriggle in my seat.
I hadn’t thought about having to sleep on the ship next to others. It’s always felt, to me, a private activity to be done alone, or between married couples.
“Then we will sleep four to a cabin,” Drake states. “Seems logical enough.”
“We can’t do that,” she replies, fast and factual.
“Why not?” I ask.
“How would we know you weren’t conspiring with each other while we slept? Preparing to murder us?”
I stare at her with disbelief. “Us murder you? With what? Our blunt forks?”
To prove my point – because I’m angry now – I stab the cured meat on my plate. The stunted fork, unsurprisingly, doesn’t even make a dent.
“Back me up, Cosmer,” Riss barks.
Cosmer speaks to the table. “I have to agree with Riss on this one. It could be risky.”
Risky. Of course. I’d forgotten I was possibly dangerous Rhavnan scum. Thank the Sisters I had Cosmer to keep reminding me.
“So, we will sleep as per the arrangements,” Riss declares, as if the matter is decided. “Ara and I, and Cosmer and Drake.”
Cosmer looks repulsed. “What? No!”
“I agree. No,” Drake says.
“I don’t think that’s an option, Riss,” I input, trying to keep my voice steady. “Not if we want to keep them alive for long enough to get this done.”
Riss looks between us all, a mixture of questioning and accusation in her eyes. She folds her arms.
“Okay. Is there something going on here that I don’t know about? Because if there’s one thing I won’t be, it’s the idiot in the room.”
Seeing as neither Cosmer and Drake rush to explain themselves, I murmur, vaguely, “There was an issue on the ship.”
She purses her lips.
“Ah. The issue. The same issue that meant Cosmer couldn’t pilot his own ship?”
I nod.
“And – just so I’m really clear here – did this issue happen to involve fists, by any chance?”
I open my mouth, about to form another – probably vague – answer, but another voice interrupts.
“I’ll sleep with Ara,” Cosmer blurts.
That gets our full attention.
His cheeks go faintly red.
I think my face is flushing, too.
“I don’t mean… I mean, you know what I mean,” he stutters. “It’s the only option that makes sense.” After a pause, he adds, “Riss, I know Ara, from back home. I trust her. And—”
He looks at me from across the table. A short distance, but it might as well be a chasm.
“I know that even though she might not like me right now, she trusts me, too.”
All eyes swivel to me.
I realise I’m being expected to agree or disagree.
“I’ll be honest – I don’t like it.” I start carefully. “But, I can see that, realistically, it’s the only way this will work.”
Riss leans over the table to speak directly to Drake. “Just so you know, big guy,” she says warningly, “I can hear a man roll over in his sleep from three cabins away. So don’t try anything funny. I’ll know.”
Cosmer kind of swings himself on the bench. “She really can.”
Drake looks at her thoughtfully. “I hadn’t heard of talents like that in people not from the Rhavnan royal bloodline.”
“What can I say? I’m one of a kind. Anyway. You’re happy with this as the arrangement too, right, Drake?”
Drake’s gaze goes to me, briefly, and then over to Cosmer.
He examines him, like he’s a creature he’s not quite sure about. A creature he might need to pick up to get a better look at, at some point.
Drake pushes his plate away.
“As I can see it’s the majority vote, my thoughts are rather redundant, aren’t they? So, let’s move on.”
After taking us to the lavatories, which are surprisingly clean but primitive, Riss and Cosmer lead us up to Deck 8, where they check cabin numbers against a sheet of paper, eventually finding two cabins close together.
Riss tells us all crew must wake at five past the hour, for the working day to begin at six.
It seems cruelly early after the day I’ve just had, and there doesn’t seem to be much point in sleeping with so few hours remaining.
Yet inside the tiny windowless room that is my cabin, I collapse into the nearest of the two small metal-framed beds, and don’t even really notice Cosmer coming in behind me and settling into his.
I have the vague realisation that I’m still in my old, grubby white button-up dress and fabric sandals, which seems impossible. My old life feels like a lifetime ago.
Old Mother’s ancient hands reach out to me. She’s missing me. She’s scared for me.
Don’t be, I try to say. Drake believes the war will be over soon, now that Rhavna has a powerful weapon. I’ll be with you again.
She slips away before our hands can touch.
Around me, people are in the engineers’ oxygen masks. Someone tries to hand one to me.
Another tries to hand me a gun.
Choose, they say.
Choice is more powerful than intention.
Who said that?
I take the mask. But the ship is falling away. It was only made of Old Mother’s cards, after all.
And it wasn’t a real choice anyway. Because the gun I hadn’t picked is now pointed at me.
And it shoots.
I awake gasping, just as another gunshot comes.
It wasn’t a dream. Someone is shooting.
“Cosmer!” I shriek, into the pitch black.
Bare feet, slapping against the wooden floor. Movement, outside.