Icebreaker: Prologue–Chapter
3

His fingers were so cunningly made that they could mend the broken bones in a kitten’s paw, setting each one in place with care and precision.

Last week they burned seven libraries and besieged a university.

They are twenty minutes away, a hundred or so of them, shouting their stupid slogans and brandishing their axes.

She’d made a nest of rags in the narrow space around the shaft of the wind turbines, and for once she was warm and almost happy.

Then she ducked into a cabin, scrambled under a hammock full of wailing babies, dived through a rusty hole in the bulkhead and threw herself beneath the first berth she came to, with no idea whether it was occupied or not.

As soon as they were gone, faded into the distance along with the ugly clank of the tar bucket, Petrel scrambled out from under the berth. An old man peered up at her from his pillow.

Petrel goggled witlessly at them.

But there was no sign of them, no sign of anything except for the dollops of tar all over her nest.

During the Oyster’s long voyage, the ship had accumulated centuries of rust, and a hull as battered as an iceberg.

Her nerves were still jangling, and she had a sudden overwhelming desire for sunlight and salty air.

She glanced around to make sure the Braid border guards weren’t watching, then fumbled behind the ladderway for her ancient and very ragged sealskin jacket.

“Oof!” she yelped, then jammed her lips shut and scuttled away from the hatch in case someone had heard her.

Petrel ran for’ard across the snowy deck as quickly as she dared to where an ancient crane loomed, and the wind fiddles sang their endless song.

Like the Commons ladderways, the open decks were neutral territory where knives, poison and pipe wrenches were forbidden.

There were always stories, especially in the long winter dark when there was nothing much else to do but mend clothes and fishing lines, plot against the other tribes, and listen to the blizzards thrashing about the ancient iron hull.

The ship was a world in itself, it was life and shelter, birth and death, love and hatred and protection against the elements.

She dived through the hatch, pulling it shut behind her and taking a stub of iron from her pocket.

STRANGER ON BERG. STARBOARD BOW.

The berg would be well past the Oyster’s stern by now.

The monstrous fish known as the Maw had been following the icebreaker for as long as anyone could remember.

But as soon as someone died, and occasionally even before they died, it roared up from beneath the waters with its massive jaws agape, waiting for the corpse to be thrown overboard.

Shipfolk killed ’em and chucked ’em overboard, and good riddance. Pity you didn’t go with ’em. Reckon the Maw thinks so too. Reckon it feels cheated.

There were no more messages in the pipes, but Orca’s anger seemed to filter through every part of the ship, so that even the gurgle of the ballast system and the crack of ice against the hull took on a furious note.

The scars on their cheeks, that marked them as belonging to Grease Alley, twitched with unconcealed hostility.

But then they moved aside, and the Engineers clattered down the ladderway, jeering at their enemies as they passed.

And with that, the rescuers stepped off the Commons and hurried towards the Engineer sick bay.

The black rats ran across folk’s toes as they slept; they chewed the charts; they haunted the Officers’ mess and the galleys.

There was a moment of utter stillness.

But as the clanging of the pipes died away, the grin slid from her face. Because Mister Smoke had limped out of the corner and was standing in front of her, his ragged whiskers twitching with agitation.

But then he became aware of a relentless thump thump thump close by.

And so, as soon as the next morning’s fishing shift was underway, the rest of the crew donned their outdoor clothes (which had been handed down over the centuries and patched and mended until there was not a scrap of the original material left) and headed up to the neutral territory of the foredeck.

Despite the cold, she liked being in the lifeboat, with its albatross-eye view of the foredeck. From up here she could see things she was not supposed to see, and hear things she was not supposed to hear.

Everyone on the Oyster knew that Crab was obsessive about tidiness.

“But Albie will be expecting an attack. He will be prepared for it. Only a lackwitted fool would oblige him.”

Petrel heard a chorus of sniggers from the other Officers, and when she peeped over the gunwale, she saw Crab scuttling away, his face red.

“You trying to sound reasonable there, Krill? Fancy yourself as wiser than the rest of us, do you?”

His face split in a vicious grin, and his fellow Engineers—men, women and bratlings—roared with laughter. Krill flushed, and raised the skillet as if he was going to throw it.

In the lifeboat, Petrel crouched as still as a bollard, hoping the three leaders would not see her.

“What do they do if they pull up something that’s all bones and bile? Why, they chuck it straight in the digester, that’s what. Get rid of the boy.”

Petrel suspected that neither Orca nor Albie believed in the sleeping captain. Krill did, however, and he bridled at the Chief Engineer’s words.