“Leg.” Locke tapped their own thigh in illustration. “Last voyage. Bad business. Want my advice, don’t talk about it.”
“What’s there to talk about?” I asked, all innocence. “I don’t know anything.”
Q leaned over to me and asked in a soft voice, “Quid?”
I tried as best as I could to explain that the captain had lost a leg in an unspecified incident and that we’d been instructed to keep silent about the whole matter. Although I will admit that, having heard mention of her, I couldn’t quite keep her from my mind for rest of the tour.
The Pequod, after all, was such a strange ship. And it seemed natural that a strange ship should have a strange captain. What manner of creature was it, I wondered, who kept so much to herself in this flying sepulcher? What wonders or horrors had she seen in the skies and what had they made of her?
What would they make of me?
CHAPTER
TWELVEQueens and Pawns (II)
My fixation on the ship’s elusive captain continued unabated, even as I grew more familiar with the vessel and the folk who served aboard her. The closer we grew to launch, the more my continued failure to catch sight of the woman began to gnaw at me (Qgrew quite irritable about it), and so, in an effort to allay my curiosity, I brought it up one evening in the mess.
“Patience,” said Truelove, “is a virtue. Not that I would expect you to understand.”
“He just means”—Marsh fingered the trapezohedral talisman about his neck—“because you’re not with the Church.”
The discovery that Marsh was to be flying with us hadn’t exactly thrilled me. I’d been even less thrilled to discover that thereasonhe was flying with us was that the ship’s second mate—the Truelove you’re just meeting—was a devout follower of the Starry Wisdom, and Sister Jermyn had put in a good word.
Truelove scowled. “It isn’t your place to tell me what I mean.”
“Sorry,” mumbled Marsh into his meal of spiced pureed polyps. It honestly surprised me to realize that Marsh was a harpooner. I think of harpooners as mavericks. As bold warriors in the hunt. But it was hard to look at Marsh and not have the wordlickspittlecome immediately to mind.
Still, I wasn’t here to judge him, I was here, in theory, towork with him. And that meant playing nice. Well, nice-ish. “I’m with a church,” I replied, a little defensively.
Truelove’s lip curled derisively. “The Golden Church, that teaches you to worship worldly things. It’s no faith at all.”
“Whereas worshiping oblivion makes complete sense?” I tried. I’d been aiming for lighthearted banter. It didn’t quite work. Truelove wasn’t the lighthearted banter type.
“I will not bandy words with outsiders.”
Across the table a slight, pretty Vestal looked up at the crowd. There’s a stereotype that everybody on Vesta is a sex worker, on account of it being a stopover for mining convoys and relying a lot on service industries. The fact that at least one or two of them wound up sky-hunting instead probably won’t dispel that stereotype entirely, but I thought I’d mention it. “I suspect,” he said, “that we all struggle with the teachings of our faiths from time to time. I’ve had difficulties with my own church before now.”
“Which church is that?” I asked.
“How about we stop talking religion?” suggested a broad-set man sitting opposite us. His name was Dawlish, and he was harpooner under the third mate (Flint, if you’re counting). He also had cheap metalwork replacing most of his jaw, half his arm, and a decent chunk of his chest over the heart.
Truelove glared; he didn’t like being gainsaid, whether by members of his own congregation or by outsiders, and still less by people who fell further down the phenotypical hierarchy than him. “Perhaps we should all remain silent?”
“Because there’s nothing else we could possibly talk about?” I ask-stated.
Trulove’s glare flicked to me. “Not usefully.”
That was probably true, but I’d never been afraid of uselessness, and my curiosity was still stabbing pins in my spine. “I wish I knew more about the captain.”
By my side, Bulkington—a stalwart and vital member of the crew whose important role in the voyage you may hear more of later—leaned forwards. He set his chiseled jaw on one handlike some great heroic statue and spoke. And when Bulkington spoke, the crew listened.
“Let me see,” he said, “what can I tell you about the captain?”
Truelove looked about to object, but Bulkington silenced him wordlessly.
“I’ve sailed with her before,” he went on. “So’ve Truelove, Flint, and Locke. You’ll hear great things about her, and terrible things. But more great than terrible if I’m any judge. Last voyage, though…” He drew in a sharp breath. “Bad business.”
Bad businesscould mean just about anything. “What happened?” I asked.
