The Edge of the Ocean Read online

  “Very possible.” Jonathan nodded. “Still, someone will be awake. A night watchman, or someone. We need to let Nyfe know we have arrived.”

  They walked up farther, past the empty booths that advertised shellfish soup, tentacle chips and stuffed crab-heads.

  Flick stuck her tongue out slightly at the menus. “Stuffed heads? Sounds vile.”

  “Stick to the soup,” Jonathan said.

  They didn’t have to go much farther before they found a man snoring loudly in a wooden hut. A hand-painted sign beside him told the three of them that when he wasn’t asleep, he had a job:

  Jonathan tapped him on the forehead.

  The man snorted but didn’t wake up.

  Jonathan did it again. “Hello?”

  Suddenly, the man’s right arm swung out like a pendulum. He smacked Jonathan in the side, sending him cartwheeling to the floor. The man stood quickly, pulling a short knife from out of nowhere. Flick and Avery stepped quickly back.

  “You young hoodlums,” he snarled, showing long, yellow teeth. “Curse on your heads. Don’t you know you’ll bring the ill measure of the sea on your heads by waking a sleeping scribe?”

  “Don’t you know it’s terrible luck to hit a fellow wearing glasses?” Jonathan countered from the ground.

  Adam Quillmaster considered. “In that case, I reckon they’d cancel out, sir?”

  Jonathan picked himself up. “How fortunate.”

  The man flicked his fingers, and the knife seemed to disappear. “Right. So, how can I be of service?”

  “We need to send a message to the Pirate Queen,” Jonathan said. “Urgently.”

  “I see. I charge extra for the captain, you know.” Quillmaster reached behind his booth and lifted out a sleeping pigeon. “Wake up, you cur,” he said to it.

  The pigeon opened one eye and gave him a cool stare, before pecking hard at the hand that held it.

  The scribe ignored it. “And what do you want saying?”

  “Tell her… tell her Jonathan Mercator has arrived to parley,” he said.

  Quillmaster was rummaging in his booth for paper, but he paused.

  The bird pecked him again.

  “Then no need for the bird, young man. As it happens, I’m planning on attending the parley myself. Give me a minute to lock up the bird and I’ll row you out.”

  6

  The scribe locked up his pigeon and his booth and led them along the promenade to a marina, where a whole host of boats floated like shiny, upturned beetles.

  Quillmaster waved them over. “I’ll take you in the Rooster. Enough room for four in that. Can you all swim?”

  “If the occasion calls for it, and I certainly hope it will not.” Jonathan raised his eyebrows.

  “Can’t guarantee nothing in these waters,” the scribe said darkly. He got into the bright green and orange boat and helped Flick and Avery in. Flick took hold of the suitcase so Jonathan could use both of his arms to balance as he boarded.

  Quillmaster took his seat at the pointy end of the boat. “Now, you’ve arrived a bit early for the parley with the Mer-Queen,” he said as they pushed off. “But lucky that you did, I reckon. Because tonight is a gathering of the ships. Anyone who calls themselves a captain or a first mate will gather to hear Captain Nyfe’s plan. Then we’ll sail where she points us, to the parley with the Mistress of the Deep.”

  “Mistress of the Deep? You mean the Mer-Queen?” Flick asked. Jonathan gripped the side tight as the boat rocked drunkenly.

  “Aye, that’s one name for her. The Queen of Weeds, that’s another. Leviathan’s Bride, the more fanciful call her.”

  They rowed out from the island into the sea proper, and then along the line of the coast. The water was calm. As they skirted around the island of the Break, the beach dwindled until it vanished altogether. There were only sharp juts of rock and cliff that dropped suddenly into the dark water. Flick sensed that the ocean would always be dark, even if the tears in the sky overhead shone through with the most brilliant white light.

  “Why did you call your boat the Rooster?” Avery asked, patting the painted side.

  “Chickens is important,” Quillmaster said, as though it were obvious. “Very industrious bird, the chicken. Keeps on giving through its whole life, never a complaint.”

  “That’s hens,” Avery said. “A rooster doesn’t lay eggs.”

  “Ah, but without the rooster in the coop, there’s no more chickens and therefore no more eggs.”

  “So, the cockerel does one job and gets a boat named after him, and the long-suffering hen gets what, exactly?”

  Quillmaster rubbed his chin. “Eaten, eventually.”

  Avery opened her mouth, probably to object, when there was a thud, and the boat gave a sudden violent rock.

  Everyone froze. Jonathan dug his nails into the bench, and the blood drained out of his face. Flick could feel her arms buzzing with tension as she tried to keep as still as possible. She gripped the suitcase handle tightly. A chill breeze lifted spray from the ocean and fogged it over their faces in a fine mist.

  Quillmaster lifted the oars from the water, and the boat drifted slightly on the swell. “Hush,” he said, unnecessarily, as everyone was still frozen in silence. “Mer-folk. They might just nudge the boat and be on their way.”

  Flick’s eyes searched the dark water. She couldn’t see anything. No faces, no fish tails.

  Quillmaster relaxed slightly. “We’re best to—”

  The boat tipped.

  As though lifted by a giant, the vessel arched onto its side. Avery screamed. Flick somehow remembered to take a huge gulp of air before all four of them went crashing into the water, the boat upturning itself on top of them.

  The force of the boat sent Flick spinning. She kept her eyes open, the saltwater stinging them as bubbles tickled her skin, racing ahead of her to the surface. The suitcase swung from her hand, no help whatsoever. For a second Flick was outraged that it wasn’t acting as a flotation device, but of course this wasn’t a normal suitcase.

  She kicked hard, trying to right herself as the water buffeted her to and fro.

  She didn’t know which way was up.

  She felt her lungs burn. Panic lanced though her. The suitcase was twisting in her fingers, dragging her deeper into the water as it sank down—

  No. As it was pulled down.

  Flick gave a shout of horror, losing precious air as she saw just what was trying to yank the suitcase out of her hand.

  When Flick had imagined mer-folk, she’d thought of cartoons, where the characters had impossibly skinny waists and curtains of red hair that matched their underwater lipstick.

  The creature that blinked back at her was nothing like that.

  The mer-person’s skin was a mottled, scaly mixture of blue and gray. There was no hair on its head, though there were thick fronds, like fins, growing down its scalp and neck. There were four deep, bloodred gashes on the creature’s throat, which had to be gills, two jet-black eyes and when it blinked—as it did now—Flick could see the creature had two sets of eyelids for each eye, one set a clear covering that looked like plastic, the other pair the same shade as its skin.

  It gave a sort of stretch of its mouth, which Flick thought might be a nasty smile.

  She pulled hard at the suitcase.

  But the mer-person had more than two arms to use. With a twist of its body, it lifted four of its eight tentacles and yanked at the suitcase.

  Flick was no match for it. The mer-person had more than twice as many limbs as she did. And she was drowning. The suitcase handle was wrenched out of her hand.

  She watched the mer-person shoot out of sight, the suitcase held tight to its chest.

  Flick flailed, her heart hammering in a panicked fight for oxygen.

  She could kick in the wrong direction, swim down or across and never breach the surface. She’d promised her parents she’d be back this time.…

  A hand grabbed her wrist. It pulled her, hard.
<
br />   Up.

  Flick’s head broke the surface, and she gasped, eyes open, water pouring down her head. Her chest raged in an effort to get air back into it, and black spots burst like dark fireworks in her vision as she kicked in the water.

  She turned, trying to find the Rooster.

  Just in time to see a boat the size of a mountain bearing down on her, cutting through the water like a scythe. The curved wooden prow was moving faster than Flick would have thought possible. A carved figurehead of a skeletal mer-person grinned down at her, glaring with empty eye sockets.

  Flick yelped, kicking hard to get out of the path of the ship. But the water was dragging her into it like she was a leaf, ready to be smashed against the hull—

  Strong arms grabbed her around the middle, and she was pulled swiftly out of the path of the ship, which never slowed down. Flick, safely out of the way of the ship, watched in silent shock as the ship’s windows, cannons, and the swollen curve of its enormous body washed past her. She’d seen big boats before, but this was something else.

  “Oh my god.” Flick tried to breathe. She turned, treading water as the rescuing arms let go of her. “Thank y…” Her words shriveled and died before they made it out of her mouth.

  Another mer-person, this one with brownish-red mottling running down their chest, stared back at her.

  Flick foolishly looked down for the suitcase. But of course, they did not have it.

  “I am sorry. About the suitcase,” they said, blinking with those strange, double-lidded eyes. “We had to.”

  “You had to?” Flick coughed.

  The creature gave a nod, then pointed behind her. “Your boat.”

  Flick looked and sighed in relief at the sight of the Rooster heading toward her, three very wet figures sitting inside it.

  “Felicity!” Jonathan—a picture in his sopping-wet suit—called.

  When she looked back, the mer-person had gone.

  Moments later, Flick was being pulled into the boat. Quillmaster, Avery, and Jonathan were as wet as she was. Avery’s spiky hair was glued to her scalp, and Quillmaster’s clothes had taken the opportunity of a good dunking to release a smell comparable to a million wet (and possibly dead) dogs.

  Jonathan was leaning against the side of the boat, a hand to his ribs. He was breathing hard and was even paler than usual.

  Flick turned to look, but the creature in the water was nowhere to be seen.

  “Any injuries, girl?” Quillmaster asked Flick.

  “No.” She started to shiver as her skin woke up and realized it was freezing. The word “hypothermia” came to mind, and her shivering got worse. What were you supposed to do if you fell into water? Quillmaster handed her a soaked blanket. “It’ll keep the wind off you at any rate. We’d best get on. The ship that just passed us was the Aconite. The flagship.”

  “That was Captain Nyfe’s ship?” Jonathan asked, wrapping himself in a blanket.

  Quillmaster snorted. “Yes. Headed to the Break in a hurry.”

  “Good.” Jonathan shuddered. He winced as he sat up, his wet shirt translucent, showing his binder underneath. He still had a hand clamped to his ribs, and Flick wondered if his waterlogged layers were making it difficult for him to breathe. “I don’t understand why the mer-people attacked us. We weren’t doing anything. What did they want with us?”

  Flick swallowed. Guilt rose in her like nausea. “They wanted the suitcase,” she said in a small voice.

  Avery looked up, and Jonathan’s eyes widened like saucers behind his glasses.

  “They wanted the suitcase?” Avery looked at the empty floor of the boat. “It’s gone?”

  “You let them take it?” Jonathan rasped. His hands twitched as if he was trying not to jump up and shake her.

  “I didn’t let them do anything,” Flick said, but it sounded pathetic. “I tried to hold on to it, but they pulled me down. I had to let go.”

  Avery sat back, shaking her head. “Why did they want it?”

  Flick looked out at the water. “I don’t know. One of them pushed me to the surface and said ‘I’m sorry, we had to’ and then swam away.”

  “Had to?” Jonathan repeated. He took his glasses off and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. And now we’re stuck here!” He thumped the side of the boat and hurt his hand. “Ow!”

  Flick buried her nose into the blanket. If they never found the suitcase again, she’d cursed them to stay here forever. There was no way to know where the mer-people had gone with the suitcase, or even why they wanted it so badly. There was no way of following them, either.

  Flick’s throat contracted hard with the sharp dry feeling of wanting to cry.

  It was all her fault.

  7

  They sailed in the wake of the Aconite. The motion from the larger ship meant their own boat bobbed and dropped in a way that made all four of them swallow hard. Avery and Jonathan had wedged themselves together for warmth, and Flick was quite jealous, wrapping her arms around herself and tucking her legs up to try to make herself as small as possible beneath the blanket, which seemed to be doing less and less by the second.

  “I’d be a gentleman and offer you my j-jacket,” Jonathan said. “But I’m using it.”

  “Hilarious,” Flick said, her teeth chattering.

  Quillmaster gave them a look and shook his head. “We’re here.”

  They looked up and saw the great looming darknesses of the anchored galleons. Flickering lights from stinking oil lamps shone here and there. The galleons might have been anchored, but they were not still. They moved and bobbed on the water like restless beasts, so Quillmaster kept a distance from them—their great curved wooden sides could have knocked the Rooster into splinters.

  The bay led into a network of caves, where rock arched out over the water like a ceiling. The low tide had exposed flattish sections of rock that acted as walkways. A channel of water ran into the largest cave, bordered on either side by these walkways.

  Quillmaster tied off the Rooster beside a number of small vessels, and everyone disembarked. Flick tried to get her legs moving again, but it was as though her blood had congealed into cold cement. She was still shivering and felt rough with guilt at losing the suitcase.

  Avery stamped her feet hard and scrunched up her nose in distaste at the squelching noise. Even her heavy boots had been no match for the ocean.

  “This way,” Quillmaster beckoned. “I can’t hear any shouting, so I don’t reckon the meeting’s started yet. Do you good to introduce yourselves afore it starts. And get dry and warm, of course.”

  They walked on slippery rock, passing several groups of sailors who looked at them with interest.

  “Quillmaster.” A man with meaty forearms hailed him. The man’s tanned skin was marked with dozens of short lines, tattooed into his skin like tally marks. Flick wondered what they were keeping count of. “You going to see Nyfe?”

  “Delivering these young ’uns, aye. Why’d you want to know, Jask?” Quillmaster sniffed.

  Jask dug a nail between his teeth. “My crew’s been talking. If the Break’s going the way we think it is, it’s proper leadership we need.”

  Quillmaster’s face stayed expressionless. “And you think you’re the man to lead the armada, do you?”

  Jask shrugged and spat whatever he’d picked from his teeth into a corner. “Better me and my crew than someone who spends time talking with fish. ‘Talk to the mer!’ Like they’re human! S’a waste of time.”

  Quillmaster clicked his tongue. “Careful, Jask. You challenge Nyfe, you’re liable to end up with no chance of passing your name on.” He glanced back and jerked his head. “Come on.”

  Flick, Jonathan, and Avery filed past Jask, whose expression was somewhere between amused and annoyed. Flick didn’t like the look of him, or the sound of what he had been talking about. Challenge the Pirate Queen? Tensions were clearly already stretched to breaking point among the pirates.

 
They walked farther into the passageway. The temperature started to increase from the amount of bodies walking about and the fiery lamps that lit up the gloom. The lamps, Quillmaster told them, were made of whatever bits of whales they couldn’t eat, wear, or turn into weapons. The stuff in the lamps was the real dregs, wrung out and already used, rotting even as it burned. The stink was the sort of sharp smell that went straight for your eyes and the back of your throat.

  Flick did not want to be stuck in this world, smelling whale-stench forever. She fell back to walk with Jonathan, who was hunched over and glaring daggers as he walked. “I’m really sorry about the suitcase. I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know you didn’t mean to, but it still happened. I’m always, always, telling other people not to lose their luggage. ‘Don’t lose your luggage!’ I might as well have it tattooed. And then what do you go and do?” He gave a sort of breathy hysterical laugh.

  Flick felt utterly miserable. “We’ll get the suitcase back,” she said, though she had trouble believing herself.

  “I suppose,” Jonathan said, not sounding very convinced either. He brightened slightly. “At least it’s not just the two of us this time. Avery will have some good ideas. She got us out of all kinds of scrapes when we were younger. Though, to be fair, she usually got us into them to begin with.”

  Flick found that she was scowling slightly.

  “I’m glad she’s come back now, even though her parents didn’t want her to. Bit like you, really,” Jonathan went on. “She’s always done the right thing, even if it’s unpopular.”

  Flick looked back at Avery, who was stepping carefully on the wet rocks. She felt the hostility she’d been nursing over her begin to slip, just a little.

  “Who goes there?” A sharp voice came from ahead.

  “Adam Quillmaster, at your service,” Quillmaster said.

  A woman came forward. She was dressed in what looked like a huge leather cone, which expanded outward from her neck. This might have looked amusing, but for the cutlass in her hand, and the blue-black tattoos all over her face, which flowed in some delicate script Flick couldn’t read down her forehead, dripping down her face and over her cheeks to her chin. Glossy purple-red lip-paint completed the decoration.