China Mieville - Railsea

“You really shouldn’t listen to this idiot boy, sir,” Elfrish said, & cuffed at him. “He’s our cabin boy.”

“You said this was your cabin boy.” Reeth pointed at Robalson.

“They both are. Never have too many cabin boys. Except this one, this Sham. He’s been trouble since he joined us.”

“So you can have too many.” The officer put his hand on Sham’s shoulder.

“Certainly you can, Captain Reeth. We had him in the brig for, for thieving, sir. He stole food.”

“They’re lying!” In confused but exhaustive detail, interspersed with expostulations of ostentatious disbelief from Elfrish, Sham jabbered his story. “You got to arrest them all!” he said. “They done all killings & robbings & they’re going to kill me! He killed the Shroakes! Smashed their train ages ago. You heard of them?”

“He’s a fantasist,” sneered Elfrish.

“He may be,” said Reeth. “But unfortunately for you we know it’s perfectly true that two young Manihikians called Shroake have departed the city. We’ve heard word that the remains of their long-disappeared family were in fact found. & these youngsters have left in a train that we are eager to find. This we also know. Now, Captain. Do you think, do you really think, we’ve heard nothing of the young man whose visit spurred a new generation of Shroakes to their annoying aspirations?”

He must have made some flickering signal with his eyes. His subordinates raised their weapons, simultaneously. Sham held his breath.

“If I were to check your hold, Captain Elfrish,” Reeth said, “what goods would I find?”

There was a silence. The Tarralesh crew fingered their weapons. He’s got them! Sham thought.

Elfrish sighed. “Alright then,” he said. “Yes,” he said. “It’s sort of like he says.”

“You see?” Sham shouted. “Arrest them!”

“But,” Elfrish said. With reassuring this-is-not-a-weapon motions, he withdrew from his pocket a leather wallet, held it up open to a silver stamp. “My letter of marque. I’m licensed. Manihiki seal. All official.”

A—what? Sham thought.

“Why didn’t you just say this from the start?” Reeth said.

“Say what?” said Sham.

“Well …” Elfrish said. He grinned sheepishly.

“Tax?” Reeth said. “As a privateer, twenty percent of everything in your hold belongs to Manihiki. You’re a bloody tax avoider.”

“When you going to arrest him?” Sham shouted. Elfrish cuffed him, & Reeth did not stop him.

“See,” Reeth said, “here’s the thing. If his story’s true, he & you are going to the same place these young Shroakes are going. & I like the sound of the technique you’re using.” He considered.

“Arrest them,” said Sham. No one did a thing.

“I’m claiming him,” Reeth decided. “In lieu of your tax. See what I can get out of him.”

“What?” shouted Sham.

“What?” shouted Elfrish. “You can’t do that!”

“Certainly I can,” said Reeth.

This wasn’t between police & criminal, Sham realised. His insides felt like dust. The dead & robbed they’d left behind weren’t Manihiki merchants, after all, not the navy’s charges. Elfrish wasn’t freelance. He was a sanctioned pirate, under the purview of a government, a Manihiki agent as much as Reeth. This was an argument between colleagues. Departmental politics.

“You know,” Elfrish said, “what’s beyond the railsea? Neither do I. But you know & I know, Captain, that there’s an inverse correlation between proximity & pecuniary recompense, vis-à-vis treasure. To put it another way, the farther out the hoard, the bigger. So. What d’you suppose is beyond the railsea ?”

“No such place as beyond,” Reeth said.

“Beg to differ.” Elfrish raised his gun, carefully, even as Reeth’s men eyed him, their weapons up. It was as if he moved so slowly they were somehow paralysed, watching. He pointed it at Reeth. Some of his crew raised theirs, too.

“The boy’s mine,” Elfrish said.

Reeth laughed. “Well done,” Reeth said. “You just lost your licence. So far I count obstruction of an officer, threatening behaviour & illegal piracy.”

“But,” Elfrish said, “I’m willing to bet—& look, so’s my crew—that what’s at the end of the world makes all that worth it.”

It was quiet under the sun. The birds circled. The wind pushed Sham’s hair around. Reeth, at last, said one word: “Fire.”

Whatever frozen moment had taken them, his officers were back in control. They were unafraid, & efficient. They fired.

The pirates fired back. Everyone fighting over Sham. Who dropped.

It went haywire on that deck. Shouting, shots, running feet. People scrambled for cover. There were screams. Reeth, still firing, dragged a wounded comrade across the deck, shouting a signal into his shoulder-mic. The wartrain’s huge-bore guns swivelled. Reeth & his fellow officers hunched & scrambled back for their own jollycart.

“Holy flaming hell,” Elfrish shouted. Even so weapon-bristling a train as the Tarralesh had little chance against a Manihiki wartrain. “Full power! Full power! Go go go go! Get away from them!”

They shot forward. The vehicle lurched, powering on into that merciful maze of hills & tunnels.

Sham had a plan. If you could call it that. He crawled; the chaos continued. He reached the base of the crow’s nest & quickly started to climb. The wartrain still approached. “Get him down,” Elfrish shouted. The Tarralesh powered towards a tunnel.

The naval train fired. Now that, that was an explosion. A whole mountain of boom grew out of nothing. The Tarralesh swayed, seemed to gust on a shockwave. Here came a wartrain.

Sham tried to work out trajectories. He could see, very calmly, suddenly, what was going to happen, where, when. “Get him!” Elfrish was yelling, waving his weapon in Sham’s direction, but his crew were scattering. Robalson was right below Sham, staring up at him with a look of miserable astonishment.

& the wartrain arrived, hard & fast, firing again, & an explosive came down, & the rear of the Tarralesh , accelerating without control, exploded.

A chorus of wails. Pirates flying through the air, scattering across the railsea. The bulk of the train itself shoved brutally forward by the impact, hurtling out of control towards & into that tunnel, that cut-out route through a rock hill ahead.

As Sham stared down, the explosion snatched Robalson away. Sham gasped.

The Tarralesh was shattering as it moved, Sham saw. Sham watched, aghast, as the train plunged into the dark, as the very crow’s nest he climbed slammed into the side of the island & tottered like a cut-down tree. He was prepared. He rode it. Down it came, slowly, it seemed, taking him clear of the snaggliest rock teeth. Falling down towards whatever isolated island this was that wrecked them.

Pirates were scattered & wailing in the dirt & the railsea. There was Elfrish, staring up at Sham from a dark hole in the earth, where he had fallen, all rage & hatred. Staring as up from below some unseen underground thing disturbed in the burrow rose, jostled, snarled, came up to take him. Elfrish did not take his eyes from Sham as it grabbed him. As it sucked him down.

Then Sham could see no more.

Down he came. Aiming for a bush he knew would hurt but less than the stones & a great slamming huff & crack of metal & he was right ow it did hurt, but he was rolling & on hardland now & breathing & shaking & lying very still, partly out of pain but partly because he couldn’t believe he’d done it, & because he knew he was still hunted.

Sham lay & listened to the wartrain approach, & the cries for help from the ruins of the Tarralesh & the terrified pirates in the predator-thronging ground.