“We should launch the Last Judgment now,” St. John says in his usual dictatorial tone, as though he, himself, might be the caplain. “End their miserable lives.”
“They are wretched and should have our sympathy,” Lazlo says.
“That’s what old Caplain Amita thought,” St. John says. “No, the Topsiders are sinners. Marauders. Caplain Marston has reminded us of that, yeah?”
“We were once Topsiders,” I interject.
“And we were blessed. Purified. Thus, we should be careful to remain loyal and faithful, for our place in heaven is not fixed,” St. John says, definitive, leaving no room for response. I look up and see him staring at me, an impish delight in his eye. A look that says, Not even for you, Remy.
I had only just come on board when St. John received his cutting.
The newly devoted are given two weeks to recover—the minimal amount of bedrest necessary, it was deemed, in order to have the best chance of surviving the procedure.
But that often wasn’t enough time.
Many died from blood loss.
Some from ague. Infection.
St. John was stoic, even then. Would not let on the amount of pain he was in.
I found him one day, stumbled upon him in the storage compartment. Found him doubled over, heaving great, shuddering tears, blood pooling between his feet.
I had to help him then to his bunk, for he could not walk, and called for Brother Dumas.
He was muttering nonsense, I remember. His skin, burning hot. Brother Dumas feared that the ague would take him, as it had taken so many of the newly devoted.
I had seen these deaths. Heard them. Loud, mad passings, as I lay in my bunk, when I turned eight years old, faking my own recovery.
So, I attended St. John, held his hand, when time and opportunity permitted, remaining by his bedside.
And he did not die.
The ague passed, and the bleeding stopped, at least for a time.
But the boy that was left was a cruel one. Particularly with me… perhaps because I saw him weakened, as no one else had.
And he hated me all the more for it.
Nothing to do about that, I figured long ago. And the sting of his rebuke has long since faded.
I almost don’t see Ex-Oh Goines step down into the mess—dour with the slight constant wink in his left eye, and the thick collar of tumular swelling about his neck. “Brother Lazlo,” he says sharply. “A word.”
Lazlo blinks. He looks at me as he slowly stands.
“He’s part of the raiding party?” I ask Ephraim, unbelieving. “Lazlo?”
The older Chorister is shocked as well. “That’s what I just heard Brother Augustine say when they were making preparations.”
I was curious as to why Lazlo had not returned to attend his afternoon duties.
“Why him, do you think?” I ask.
No Chorister this young has ever been sent Topside.
“Surely, there must be some mistake.”
“Something to do with his knowledge of the electrics. Circuits and the like,” Ephraim whispers. “Remember, Brother Calvert trained him up on fixing such things.”
“Why not send Brother Ernesto?” I ask.
Ephraim only shrugs, disheartened as myself. “Come, we have to prepare.”
To raid a Topsider ship, the Leviathan dives and then comes up from beneath the enemy on blown tanks, cutting engines so that it rises silently from the depths.
Leighton, Callum, Augustine, Silas—the strongest and youngest of the brothers—and now Lazlo, and Ex-Oh Goines himself, all comprise the raiding party. They have changed from their robes into trousers and tunics and hoods, all dyed a squid-ink black. Once the bulbs affixed to the bulkhead above the main hatchways begin flashing, they make their way forward, ready to exit up through the forward trunk hatch, at the top of the balneary, as soon as we’ve surfaced. They’re armed with the few remaining firearms the boat can claim but mostly with knives—rust-spotted machetes and lengths of chain and jars filled with used oil with rags stuck into them. Grapples and hooks and coils of rope. Lazlo is given no weapon at all. His garb hangs about his lean body like loose skin.
I fight the urge to step forward, to speak to him as he passes. To send God with him. But now is a time for silence. Each in the line receive the cross in oil upon their foreheads, are given communion. Lazlo’s face is wan, flat as he receives Caplain Marston’s anointment.
Silas’s face is tight and troubled as I’ve ever seen, and he has been on several boarding parties in the past.
It puts a sourness in my tummy.
When at last we are surfaced and the trunk hatch opened, I watch as they disappear in a line up the ladder.
When the hatch is closed, we each attend our stations, ready to dive, ready to respond, waiting in the dimness. In the control room, Caplain Marston keeps an eye on the surface through the periscope, while Brother Marcus monitors the radar, and Brother Philip scans the sonar, with its radial arm raking the round, green screen, ready to ping any new enemy contact.
Myself, I straddle the hatch to the chapel, ready to check the bilge pumps in both compartments should we take on water.
We wait in what should be silent prayer, in meditation. But my mind swims in other, deeper, darker pools.
Lazlo. He is not short, not weak, but younger by far, and nowhere near so strong and able as the rest of the brothers in the party.
I once asked Brother Silas what it was like up there, on the surface.
Many of us had already posed this question—to him, because we knew him to be the most likely of any of the older brothers to answer—but he only answered when it was just he and myself, on kitchen duty.
“Topsiders, though—the marked—they deceptive, like. Trick you into feeling guilt for them. But you cannot have guilt for them if you wish to survive—they vicious. More vicious now than when I come aboard. I was your age, about. The war had happened, yeah. I lived on an island. A small set of islands called the Maldives.
“The poison. You hear about the poison, from the great war, you know. How it kills. Slow, like. But wan’t poison got my people. Our island kept being raided by pirates—strangers from somewhere else. Evil Topsiders you hear about now. Accents I couldn’t understand. Nothing we could do to stop them after a time. Did not know God then, as I do now. That’s why I spared, yeah. They keep coming back, pirates. Finally, they took me one night. My family. Won’t tell you what all they do to them, what they going to do to me, yeah. But then their boat was raided by the caplain, an’ he showed no mercy. Took me aboard, though. Showed me God, yeah. Truth.”
“What about the sun?” I asked him.
He squinted. “Don’t remember much of that—only the elders can see the sun. But the moon, yes. Seen that. Plenty of that, on raids. Bright and round and blue-white. And the air. Rushes past your skin. Gives you chills,” he said, hacking off the head of a skipjack in one heavy swing of a cleaver.
“What was your name?” I asked him. “Before you took the vow of the order?”
After all he had just confessed, this request gave him pause.
“I gave that name up.”
“It’s just… I don’t remember mine,” I said.
“Good,” he said, swiping a large knife across the skin of the skipjack, scales flying every which way.
“I only remember an image. An image on a banner, I guess.”
And I told him of the emblem that for some reason has remained rooted in my mind. Of the palm tree and the sea and the blue sky.
“Silas is a better name than my real one,” he says. “Silas was a prophet. And you… you are named after a saint.”