Conor settled his goggles. ‘I have to do this, Linus. That island owes me. Five more bags and I leave – we leave – for America.’
‘You have to hurl yourself into space for greed? For science I can understand, barely – that’s what Nick and Victor dedicated their lives to.’
‘It’s more than greed. It’s right.’
Linus barked a bitter laugh. ‘Right? It would be right for you to rescue your parents and your queen from the madman who has deceived them.’
This gave Conor pause. Linus was speaking the truth. His loved ones were in danger and he had no idea how to save them without dooming them all. And, if he were honest with himself, he dreaded seeing that look of pure hatred in his father’s eyes.
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said finally. ‘Nothing except take my diamonds.’
Linus raised his arms like a preacher. ‘All of this. All of it for diamonds. It’s beneath you.’
Conor ratcheted up his wings, ducking into the wind stream.
‘Everything is beneath me,’ he said, but his words were snatched away, as he was, into the night sky.
Great Saltee
Billtoe and Pike were in the Fulmar Bay Tavern, spending their evening off over a bucket of half-price slops as was their custom.
Pike followed a long swallow with a belch that shook his stool.
‘Them’s good slops,’ he commented, smacking is lips. ‘I’m getting wine, beer, brandy and a hint of carbolic soap, if I’m not mistaken.’ Pike was rarely mistaken when it came to slops, for it was all he ever drank, even though with Battering Ram money in his pocket he could afford actual beer, rather than whatever ran off the bar into the slops’ tray.
‘What do you say, Mister Billtoe? You tasting soap? Goes down easy, but doesn’t stay in long, eh?’
Billtoe was not in the mood for tavern chatter. He wanted nothing more than to drink himself into oblivion, but he was mightily afraid that when he reached oblivion, the French devil would be waiting there for him. Since that night on Little Saltee one week ago, Arthur Billtoe had not been his usual cruel and cheerful self. He felt the presence of the flying demon looming over him, waiting to bring down his blade. Then there was the small matter of Marshall Bonvilain’s dead prisoner. Billtoe lived each waking moment struggling with his panic. The effort was such that he had developed a shiver.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mister Billtoe,’ said Pike, ‘if there’s something wrong with you. You ain’t been taking the usual care with your ruffled shirts, and they’re your pride and joy. You been shaking a lot and mumbling too. And that’s plague right there, or maybe Yellow Jack, though I never heard of that this far north.’
Billtoe’s mood was darkened by the realization that Pike, the hairless simpleton, was his only friend. He never had much use for friends before now. When you had as many dark secrets as Arthur Billtoe, the last thing you needed was friends to wheedle them out of you. But tonight he was on the brink of utter despair and he needed words of comfort that came out of an actual mouth, and not just the imaginary voice of his favourite slipper to which he talked occasionally.
‘Pikey, can I ask you something?’
‘Of course you can, Mister Billtoe. I would appreciate nothing with numbers or directions though, cos they give me blinders.’
Billtoe took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Do you believe in the devil?’
‘Warden’s the devil, if you ask me. I mean, why can’t the convicts eat each other? Two birds with one stone right there. Convicts get fed, and we don’t have to bury the dead ones.’
‘No!’ snapped Billtoe. ‘Not the warden, the man himself. Old horned head.’ He turned on his barstool to face Pike. His face was gaunt and his eyes were wide and red-rimmed, and the ruffles of his pirate shirt did seem wilted. ‘I’ve seen him, Pikey. I’ve seen him. With his wings and flaming eyes. He landed on the island last week, coming for me he was. Called me mon-sewer. The devil called my name, Pikey. He called my name.’
Billtoe buried his face in his forearms, and soon his back shook with sobbing.
Pike licked his palm, then smoothed back his one strand of hair. He had seen the devil too, except it wasn’t your actual devil, it was a man with wings strapped to his back. Pike saw them taken off and folded up. It was a shame to see Arthur all broke up with his devil talk, but information like this was worth money, which Pike himself could collect as soon as the Rams sent their man for a parley.
Then again, if anyone knows how to make real money out of a situation, it’s Arthur Billtoe. And won’t he just love me when I take away his devil.
Pike wrestled his sketchpad from the pocket it was bent into, opened it to the sketches he had scratched at Sebber Bridge and slid the book across the bar.
‘I seen him too, Mister Billtoe, your devil.’
Billtoe’s bleary eyes peeked out from over his sleeves. For a moment he didn’t understand what he was seeing, then he recognized the figure that Pike had drawn. And if Pike had seen the devil too, then Arthur Billtoe was not losing his mind. His eyes assumed their usual piggy cunning and one hand scuttled out crablike to grab the notepad.
‘That’s him, ain’t it, Mister Billtoe?’ said Pike. ‘Only he ain’t no devil – he’s a man like you and me, except taller and better made than us. You being stumpy and me being, well, me. But that’s him I’ll bet, ain’t it, Mister Billtoe?’
Billtoe straightened shrugging off his mood like a dog shaking water from its coat.
‘Call me Arthur, Pikey my friend,’ he said.
Pike smiled a gap-toothed smile. He was familiar with that look in Billtoe’s beadies. It was the same look he got just before he searched a prisoner. Billtoe could smell guineas.
An offshore breeze blew constant and the moon was a silver shilling behind a veil of clouds. The perfect evening for clandestine flying. Conor Finn felt almost contented as he dipped the glider’s nose, swooping in to land on Sebber Bridge. His control of the craft was much improved and there was no greater impact on his heels than if he had jumped from a low wall. The propeller bands were still fully wound as fortune had steered him clear of stalls. There was also the heartening fact that he had recovered three bags of Battering Ram diamonds from the salsa beds on Little Saltee without a sniff of a prison guard. He had worried that Billtoe might have swallowed a bottle or two of courage and come looking for his devil with a few cronies, but there had been neither sight nor smell of Arthur Billtoe.
I scared that rat for now. But he won’t stay scared long.
One more trip. And I shall have all seven pouches.
Why do you need all seven? was a question that Linus might have asked, and now Conor asked himself.
I need seven as compensation for my imprisonment. It is a matter of honour.
This was the argument that had sustained him in prison. He would do what Billtoe could not: take his diamonds off the island. But now, this plan seemed flawed. Why expose himself to danger time and time again, when he should already be on the steamer to New York? It was true that Otto had been promised half of the diamonds, but even if he paid off the Malarkeys in full, he would still have more than enough diamonds to buy him a passage to America and a new life when he got there.
I do not wish to leave, he realized. But I must.
Staying was of no benefit to him or his family.
Seven pouches. Then America.
The skiff was beached high on the shale, with a single set of tracks heading back towards Fulmar Bay. Zeb Malarkey was keeping his end of the deal, and why wouldn’t he, with half the diamonds in his coffers and more to come.
Conor sat on the boat’s gunwale, unfastening the glider’s harness. Not much flight damage tonight, but he would check every rib and panel tomorrow to make sure. Even the tiniest tear in the wing fabric could unravel an entire panel and drop him from the sky like a plugged pigeon.