“I was. And happy we all are now that you did not succumb to that fate.”
“I’m presuming also you got out through the hidden tunnel? The one that wound down to the river?” He waited for her to nod. “Tell me this, then. What happened to the swordsman? The Prussian,” Matthew emphasized. “He called himself Count Dahlgren.” Matthew and the count had been locked in deadly combat, and but for a silver fruit tray one young problem-solver would have found himself run through by a wicked dagger. Though Dahlgren had been wrapped in a pair of curtains and clouted into a goldfish pond, his left arm broken at the wrist, still the enigmatic Prussian had escaped capture that day, and had disappeared.
“I have no idea,” Aria answered. “That’s the truth.”
Matthew believed her. He hated loose ends. Dahlgren was definitely a loose end. Moreover, Dahlgren was a loose end who could still manage a sword and surely bore a Prussia-sized grudge against the adversary who’d bested him. The question was still unanswered: where had Dahlgren gone, and where was he now?
Surely the count was not waiting for him at the end of this voyage, Matthew mused. But he felt sure that somewhere, at sometime, he would meet Dahlgren again.
Matthew decided to try another angle to one of his three questions, now that he had this parchment and some idea that he was being required to playact the part of a rather nasty young killer. Obviously, a great deal of thought and preparation had been put into the professor’s plan…whatever it was. “I want to see Berry and Zed.”
“That’s not possible. I believe that Gentry has assured you—”
“You’re speaking when you should be listening,” Matthew interrupted. “You must not have heard. I’m not asking, I’m telling.” He rolled up the parchment and wrapped it with the black cord. “I want to see Berry and Zed. Now.”
“No,” she said.
“And why not? Because if I see what condition they’re being kept in, I may refuse to go along with this…nonsense?” He flung the parchment across the room to land in the far corner. “All right, then. You go tell Sirki I refuse to leave the ship when we dock wherever we’re going. Tell him they’ll have to carry me out on a stretcher, after all. Tell him—”
“I’ll tell him,” Aria agreed, “to kill them. Starting with the girl.”
Matthew forced a harsh laugh. He and the woman might not have swords, but they were fencing all the same, and damned if she wasn’t as good at using her own weapon as Dahlgren had been with his. “You will not,” said Matthew, and now he approached her. She stood her ground and lifted her chin. “Sirki vowed Berry would be returned safely to New York, and myself as well. His anger toward Zed will have passed by now. I have the feeling he might be an honorable man, in his own way.” And you a dishonorable woman in all ways, he might have added. He continued right up to her, as if he owned the very air she breathed. He had already decided he had very little to lose in this situation, and he must show himself to be a powerful force. As much force as he could masquerade under, to be honest. A look of uncertainty passed only briefly across Aria’s face before she righted her ship. She stood firm and defiant before him, and she started to take another bite of the dwindling apple.
“If I’m going to be Nathan Spade,” said Matthew, “I’m starting now. Rebecca,” he added with a faint sneer. “And who gave you permission to steal my apples?” He took it from her before it reached her mouth, and then he took a bite from it. A bit green and sour, but there it was. “I said I want to see Berry and Zed today,” he told her as he chewed. “This moment. Is that clear enough for you?”
She didn’t answer. She stood expressionless, like a cipher, perhaps revealing her lack of soul. Or, possibly, she was simply struggling to control a scene that had gotten away from its playwright.
“All right, then. I’ll find them on my own.” Matthew picked up the bowl to prevent further thievery, and also to take the fruit to Berry and Zed for he fully intended to either find someone to unlock the necessary door or he was going to kick it down.
She let him get a grip on the door’s handle before he spoke. “You can only spend a few minutes with them. If I take you.”
He turned upon her as if determining where to thrust the sword, now that her defenses had been cracked. “You’ll take me,” he said. “And I’ll spend as much time with them as I please.”
She hesitated. Then, with a small cat-like smile, “I’m not sure I approve of this Nathan Spade so very much. He does seem to like to give commands, when he’s in no position to—”
“Be silent,” Matthew said flatly. “I didn’t ask to be here. Neither did my friends. So take me or step aside or do whatever you need to do, madam. But I’m done listening to you prattle.”
A hint of red crept across Aria Chillany’s cheeks. She blinked as if she’d been struck. But the damnedest thing, Matthew thought, was that the look in her eyes was not so much temper as tempest, and she began to chew on her lower lip as if it might spring forth a wine of rare vintage.
“I’ll take you,” she said quietly.
Good enough, Matthew thought, and if the woman had not been as near he would have heaved a sigh of relief so gusty the sails might have blown from their masts.
He followed her along the corridor. She took a key from an inner pocket of her jacket and started to unlock a narrow door about thirty feet from Matthew’s cabin, but she found the door already unlocked; its grip turned smoothly beneath her hand. She returned the key to its place. “It seems your friends already have a visitor this morning,” she told him.
The door opened on stairs that descended between two oil lamps hanging from ceiling hooks. At the bottom was a second door. Down here, nearer to the sea and the mollusks that likely clung by the hundreds to the hull, the aromas of tar, fish and old wet timbers were nearly overpowering. The constant low thunder of the waves was bad enough, but the creaking of the Nightflyer made it sound as if the vessel was coming apart at pegs, nails and seams. At this level the ship also rolled like a little bitch. Matthew was certain he would face Berry’s wrath about this, at some point to come. Yet it was he who should feel wrath, for who had asked her to stick her nose into this? Who had asked her to creep along and appear there on the dock, apparently in an effort to save him? Who had asked her?
Not I, Matthew thought, and didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until Aria Chillany looked over her shoulder and inquired, “What was that?”
He shook his head. She took him through the second door, and into the brig.
He had a moment of feeling he was back in time, entering the dingy gaol in the town of Fount Royal to hear a witchcraft case as a magistrate’s clerk. This might be a shipborne brig, yet the four cells were familiar and the iron bars as forbidding as any landlocked cages for human beings. Several dirty lanterns hung from hooks, illuminating the scene with a murky yellow light. A rat skittered across the floor at Matthew’s feet. It was chasing a cockroach as big as a crab. The smells of foulness commingled with the odors of musty wet wood and the fishy bowels of the ship were nothing short of an apocalyptic assault. Matthew felt rage rising in him, as he saw Zed confined in one cell to the left and Berry—a poor moldy ragamuffin with a tangled mass of red hair, she appeared to be—confined in the furtherest one to the right. They had straw mattresses and buckets, and that was the extent of the hospitality offered here.
“God blast it!” Matthew nearly shouted. His throat had almost seized shut. “Get them out of there!”
A man stepped from a pool of shadows in front of Zed’s cell. “Sir, please restrain yourself.”