There is little in the world more curative than a picnic. Some call for doctors and tonics when they fall ill. I call for friends and wine. “But,” you say, “what if you are really dying?” Of course I am! We all are! The question is, gentle reader, in these uncertain times, would you rather be a patient or a picnicker?
—Folkways and Right of Ways in the Silk Gardens, Anon.
They hadn’t far to go before they found a tranquil bit of air near an unremarkable expanse of block. The ship clung to the spot as firmly as to an anchor. The afternoon shadow and the color of the Tower’s masonry were favorable for concealing them from the other ships in the sky. For the moment, the Stone Cloud was as inconspicuous as a moth on a tree.
Breaking the long-standing tradition of crew and command dining separately, luncheon was served in the great cabin, which was still a rough mess, though Adam and Iren had managed to board up the old chart house and replace the captain’s door. A leaf was added to the table and barrels were brought to fill out the seats, so they could all enjoy Voleta’s pilfered feast together. There were loaves of millet bread, wild honey, clotted cream, boiled ham, turnips, green apples, limes, pickled cabbage, and jerky that some believed was venison and others most definitely bison. To this bounty, the captain contributed the last of his private stock of rum and real linen napkins. Iren proclaimed the napkins too fine to use, and so dined with hers draped over her shoulder to keep it from getting soiled.
They hummed around mouthfuls, clapped their pewter cups of diluted rum together, and scratched so furiously at the captain’s china with knife and fork it was a wonder the plates didn’t split in half.
The only person untouched by the high spirits was Edith. She ate as hungrily as the rest, but she seemed to relish neither the rare victuals nor the tart grog. At the start of the meal, she posed her forearm on the table so that it might appear more natural, with the fist standing and the wrist bent. The ruse was unnecessary; everyone knew when she had to be helped up the rope ladder that something was the matter with her arm. But she had said nothing of it, and the crew was too in awe of her to ask.
They were just beginning their second portions when the wrist of Edith’s engine was jostled by a bump of the table. Her fist rolled against her mug, tipping it over. The resulting spill wetted the tablecloth and the conversation alike. Amid the difficult silence that followed, Edith pushed back her chair, picked up her arm to keep it from swinging against her hip, and exited to the main deck.
The crew turned to their captain for some sign of how to react.
He smiled reassuringly and said, “We all owe our first mate an enormous debt of patience. Let’s see if we can’t pay down our balance a little.”
The crew stared at their empty plates with a mixture of drowsy pleasure and amazement. Senlin knew it wouldn’t do any good to try to squeeze any more wakefulness out of them. They had to sleep.
He announced the suspension of watches for the day, and at that, the crew lurched to their feet and filed out the door, carrying dishes, cups, and cutlery in precarious stacks. It didn’t matter that the evening was hours off. Iren, Voleta, and Adam were in their hammocks and asleep before Senlin had finished shaking out his tablecloth.
Senlin found Edith tying telltales to the rigging. Replacing the simple ribbons that helped them track the wind was not an especially pressing chore, but it had given the rest of the crew an excuse to go below without engaging the first mate, and more importantly, it had saved Edith from having to discuss her dead engine.
With only one hand and her teeth to help her, she struggled to knot the ribbons. Senlin offered his assistance, but she refused with a forced politeness that told him she would take any further insistence as an insult.
He wanted to broach the subject of where she would sleep since her room had been demolished. He had come with every intention of offering his bed. He could bunk with Adam, and she could have the great cabin to herself. But he thought better of the idea now. Sympathy, he suspected, would only make her feel pitiful, and that would make her angry. She would bunk with Iren and Voleta and probably feel better for being nearer her crew.
Senlin informed her of the suspended watch and left her gritting a red ribbon between her teeth.
In all honesty, he was relieved to keep his room and bed. He didn’t feel well and hadn’t since collapsing in the Golden Zoo, though he had a difficult time articulating, even to himself, what pained him. The closest he could come to describing the malady was to say it was like an itch that shifted between organs. One moment, it was in his brain, then his heart, and then his liver. The itch caused an anxiety so intense it made him nauseous. He’d assumed this was all a symptom of malnutrition, but the gluttonous meal he’d just indulged in, his first real meal in days, had not cured him.
Perhaps he was really ill.
The thought made him laugh. He’d been seeing ghosts for weeks, and only now did it occur to him that he might be genuinely unwell.
As soon as he was alone in his cabin, he felt an intense desire to meditate upon Ogier’s portrait of Marya, to refresh his memory of his wife.
He put on a nightshirt and climbed into his cockeyed bed. He withdrew the painting from the cavity behind the headboard and pressed it to his forehead as if it were a holy relic. The faint odor of linseed and varnish had, over the months, begun to replace his memory of Marya’s natural fragrance. The brushwork of the painting had a tactile fingerprint that he took great comfort in tracing.
After only a moment’s reflection, he began to feel better. His nausea faded; the itch turned into a warm, gentle pressure.
And to think, he’d left the portrait behind during his trek to the Zoo, knowing full well that Iren might have been forced to withdraw. How close had he come to losing this last glimpse of his wife? He resolved not to make the same mistake again. From then on, wherever he went, he would carry her portrait with him.
He was hardly surprised, given the sincere feelings that the painting revived, when the specter of Marya appeared in her nightgown under the quilts at his side.
“I’m glad we’re talking again, Tom.”
“I thought you were gone,” he said, glancing to see if she was still made out of wet daubs of paint, but she had returned to her former, flesh-and-blood self.
“Why would you think that?”
“The last time I saw you, you told me to let you go.”
“Don’t be absurd. I only said that because that horrible woman was there, and you were telling her everything I said.”
“She isn’t horrible. She’s a faithful friend who has saved my life more than—”
“A faithful friend!” Marya broke in with a punctuating scoff. “She’s cut from the same cloth as the Red Hand, if you’ll recall. For all you know, she’s another assassin.”
“Then she’s made a terrible botch of it.” Since the moment of quiet reflection was ruined, Senlin stowed the painting again. He turned to face the apparition in his bed. “What do you want?”
“Oh, that hurts, Tom. I just want to help you. I’m the little voice in your heart that keeps you on the right.”
“You’re my conscience, are you? I must be a terrible person.”
Marya gave him a tart smile. “I’m only looking out for you. I’m tired of seeing you squander your advantage.”
“What advantage? We’re nearer to starving than not. We’ve grown so accustomed to tucking our tail and running away, we’re in danger of making an art form of it.”
“Yet, you have in your possession a thing that, time and again, has shown itself to be of great value to powerful men. It doesn’t matter that you don’t understand why it’s valuable, Tom. What matters is that it is a boon! How long until you recognize that? How long until you take control and stop with the wait-and-sees and the wish-I-mays?”
“Oh, shut up!” he barked.
The knock at his cabin door was tentative but familiar: three swift taps. He sat up in bed, smoothing the quilts about his lap. When he looked around again, the specter of Marya had vanished.
He called for Edith to enter. The first mate wore what passed for pajamas on the ship: a shapeless tunic cinched at the waist with a rope. The outfit made her look like an altogether different person, not least of all because it hid her engine arm. Senlin fancied he could see her old country self peeking through.
“So, I guess she’s back?” Edith said.
“I think we need a new knock,” he said. “Maybe something like, hard, soft, hard.” He rapped the pattern out upon his bedside table. “How does that sound?”
“Fine, but what is it for?”
“Well, it’s just our way of saying all those awkward things we’d rather not say out loud. Things like, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just shouting at ghosts.’”
“Oh, I see. Could it also say, ‘I’m sorry I ruined lunch by storming out like a spoiled brat?’” She delivered the pattern on the table: hard, soft, hard.
“Absolutely,” he said. “That is exactly the sort of thing it would say.”
“Between the two of us, I think this knock will get a lot of use.”
He pulled on a robe, a ridiculously colorful silk thing that had been Captain Lee’s.
“No, you really don’t have to get up,” Edith said, trying vainly to wave him back to bed.
He ignored her protests and cinched the belt around his waist. “How’s your lip?” he asked, pointing to the corner of his own mouth.
She touched the dark crack in her lower lip. “Fine, fine. How’s your head?”
“Better, actually.”
“I’m just hunting about for a blanket and a pillow. The blanket is for the draft; the pillow’s for Iren’s snoring.”
“Of course. I have more than enough. Let’s see.” He dug through the tall wardrobe, gathering a bale of bedclothes. He helped her hook it all under her able arm. It took a little tucking and retucking of blanket corners before the mass would stay.
“You do realize that Lee didn’t wear that robe? It was for his … guests,” she said.
“It fits surprisingly well. He must’ve preferred tall women,” Senlin said, plucking at the pattern of tropical birds.
“That he did.”
The pause grew into a silence, yet she made no move to leave. He felt certain that she wanted to say something more and only needed a gentle prod to come out with it. He wanted to ask the question she had dodged many times before, so he tapped the rhythm upon the table: hard, soft, hard.
“Wearing it out already? All right. Let’s have it,” she said, hiking her chin at him, playfully daring him to speak his mind.
“Why won’t you talk about what happened to you? Why won’t you tell me about the Sphinx?”
She was smiling still, but sadly. “That’s a big knock, Tom. But you’ve been patient. You’ve been very patient. I’ve avoided talking about it because you’d look at me differently if you knew. And I don’t want to feel any less like myself than I already do.”
“Well, that’s not fair. I let you mediate between me and my ghost, knowing full well you’d look at me differently. But I did it anyway because you are my friend, and I needed your help.” He squared his shoulders inside the flamboyant robe. “Trust me, Mister Winters, whatever you tell me, I will think no less of you.”
She was struggling to keep the bedding in hand and so allowed Senlin to take it and set it upon the table. Though her gaze had been elusive at first, it now became direct and probing. “Before the Sphinx saved my life, he made me sign a contract. I knew I was dying. All I had to do to stop it was sign my name. How strange is that? To be resurrected by a pen? It was only later when the fever broke that I thought about what I had signed.”
“What did you agree to?”
“To be a Wakeman. To watch over the Tower,” she said, and stroked the elbow of her lifeless arm. “You have to understand: Most of what I know about the Wakemen I learned from Billy Lee, and there was a lot he didn’t know. I think there are a couple hundred of us spread throughout the ringdoms. We’re not too hard to spot.”
“Like the Red Hand. He stood out in a crowd. He was a Wakeman, wasn’t he? And that’s why you couldn’t kill him, not on purpose. The two of you serve the same master.”
Edith nodded repeatedly, mechanically, as if she had to shake the word out of her head. “Yes,” she said at last. “But I’m nothing like him.” She laughed, but her expression was almost frightened.
“No, of course you aren’t. But if the Red Hand was a Wakeman, why was he working for the commissioner?”
“The Sphinx contracted him out. I’m sure the commissioner paid a lot of money to have the Red Hand on his staff. And he isn’t the only one. Armies, agencies, port guards: Everyone wants a Wakeman on his roll. We have our uses.”
“Assassination, for one,” he said. She gave him a pained look, and he rushed to reassure her. “You know I don’t hold you responsible for anything that thug did. But I need to know: Did the Sphinx order the Red Hand to kill me? Does he want me dead?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that Commissioner Pound ordered the Red Hand to do it. You did rob him, after all.”
“But I don’t understand: What is the purpose of the Wakemen? How can you be expected to keep the peace while conducting assassinations and public executions?”
“The Sphinx isn’t really concerned with peace—or war, for that matter. He’s interested in maintaining the Tower. Wars have come and gone. The Tower endures.”
“So, it’s about the distribution of power? The Sphinx places the Wakemen where he sees an unbalance of might?”
“I think so, but it’s only a guess. He hasn’t given me my orders yet. I had to get my strength back and grow into my arm before I’d be of any use to him. That’s what I was doing on Lee’s ship.”
“What will the Sphinx do with you?”
“I don’t know. And honestly, I’m afraid to find out. My plan was to avoid him for as long as I could. I always knew I’d have to go back for more fuel eventually, but I’d told myself it might be years. He could order me to do anything.”
“Give me an example of anything.”
“He could assign me to the Baths to replace the Red Hand.”
“Would you go?”
“Would I climb aboard the Ararat and chase after my old crew? Of course not. But I don’t know what the consequences of refusing would be. He could take his arm back, I suppose. Though I think it might kill me if he did. He didn’t just strap the arm on. It’s bolted to my bones,” she said, and paled at the thought.
“Perhaps you could learn to live without his batteries. Look at Marat—”
“Are you really suggesting I follow his example? You want me to break my word? You want me to live as an invalid and a coward? Pride and honor aside, the Sphinx does not give up his toys easily, Tom. Short of surrounding myself with guns and slaves and living in a cage in a spider-infested hole, there’s nowhere to hide.”
“You could go home.”
“To what? Assuming the arm of the Sphinx doesn’t reach that far, which I wouldn’t lay a wager to, have you forgotten what drove me to the Tower in the first place? The weasel used a little hay fever as an excuse to exclude me from my own affairs. What would my husband do with a one-armed wife? I’d be shut up in the attic so fast … No, I go home whole, or I don’t go home at all.”
Senlin’s internal casting about for an answer was reflected in his shifting stance. He looked like a man trying to learn to waltz from figures in a book. Every plot that came to mind for how she might escape her contract or the Sphinx’s reach seemed, even to him, impossible. After a few fits and starts, his agitation turned to resolution. “Then I suppose we have no choice.”
“I have no choice. You do. You have to keep the crew, especially Adam, as far away from the Sphinx as possible.”
“Why Adam in particular?”
“Because I don’t want to pick up where Billy Lee left off. He was the Sphinx’s headhunter. Lee scouted everywhere he went for maimed and desperate souls, souls like me. He was such a cruel opportunist, and still he was not half as bad as the Sphinx. The Sphinx has a predator’s eye for injuries and insecurities. He can be very persuasive. I’m afraid he’d put a tin eye in Adam’s head the minute we turned around.”
“Did the Sphinx pay Lee to supply him with … recruits?”
“Handsomely.”
“That means the Sphinx has use for money. Which is good for us, because I suspect we have something that’s worth a lot of money. I used to think that Pound was on a foxhunt, that he was just chasing us for sport, and the painting and the theft were only an excuse for the outing. But after seeing those forgeries in the Zoo and Marat’s response when he thought I’d stolen one, I’m beginning to think our painting is worth quite a lot.”
Edith gave him a sidelong look, obviously mistrustful of the direction of his logic.
He went on. “Perhaps we’ve been going about this the wrong way. We’ve been on the defensive so long we’ve grown accustomed to thinking of ourselves as powerless, without resource. But what if we’re not? What if I proposed a trade with the Sphinx? He repairs our ship and he gives me a letter of introduction that will get us past the port guards of Pelphia. I’m sure that wouldn’t be any trouble for a man who has a finger in every ringdom.”
“But what have you to trade?”
“I have Ogier’s painting, which he can sell to the commissioner or Marat or whomever. I don’t care. And we have information about Marat and his band of babblers. You said the Sphinx is concerned with maintaining the status quo. Don’t you think the Sphinx would like to know about the revolutionaries hiding out in the old park?”
“That is an awful idea, Tom. Did you not listen to anything I said?”
“You’re right! What am I thinking? First I must bargain for your freedom, for you to be released from your contract.” He brightened, looking as proud as a rooster in his colorful robe, though he did not see his confidence reflected in her expression. “Why not face our bullies, Edith? Let’s have no more of these wait-and-sees and wish-I-mays. Let’s get on with it.”
“You have no idea what you’re stirring up,” Edith said. “You should leave me at the nearest port and take the crew as far away as you can.”
“Absolutely not. The crew stands behind me, Mister Winters, and I stand with you. We are going to see the Sphinx.”