The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (34 page)

But they persevered, and after an hour had come some distance around the great circle formed by the lower part of the mount – although which way they were facing now, Dow couldn't say, for if this was the pole then there was no north or east or west anymore, there was only south. And they'd found no sign of their boat, nor of its crew. The great wave seemingly had devoured them whole.

No other such wave rose, but the sea, it seemed to Dow, was increasingly disturbed by the plumes of the underwater fires. Steam hung in a thick overcast across the entire basin. And the eruption there on the mount was only gaining in potency, a vast vibration now humming continually underfoot. Dow and Nell paused to study the upper crater. The fountains were spurting higher and brighter, and every now and then great lumps of stone would tear loose from the rim, to fly upwards with a boom, like gigantic cannon-shot. It was as if, having spent the last few hours clearing its gullet, the volcano was only now beginning to roar full-throatedly.

They turned away and crept on for perhaps another half hour. But by then things were becoming menacingly unpleasant. The choking fumes were proliferating, and ash was beginning to rain down, along with avalanches of loose stones from higher up. The mount may have let Captain Altona and his men lie unmolested for ten months – but it seemed determined to do otherwise for Dow and Nell. The eruption roared louder.

Nell was coughing. ‘I can't breathe,' she got out finally. ‘We must get clear of these fumes and poisons.'

Dow had his own mouth and nose covered by his shirt. He stared about – was there any high place nearby that stood above the reek? He couldn't see any. But some distance ahead he did spy a smoother section of ground, a swathe of stone that seemed free of cracks and fissures. There might be fewer fumes there – maybe they could even sit down and rest.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘only a little further.'

They took a few more steps, but then, to Dow's shock, the mountainside before them began to
slide.

It was exactly the area for which he'd been aiming – a whole great slab of the mountain was in motion now, surging towards the sea. A thousand fractures appeared across the stone, glowing red. In a horrified flash Dow understood – it had not been solid ground at all, but another of the rivers of molten stone, merely crusted over temporarily, and now flowing once more.

‘Back!' he told Nell, waving a hand. ‘We have to go back.' For already the heat from the river ahead was overpowering.

They reeled back the way they had come. A new cloud of ash, very hot, was descending upon them, and it became almost impossible to breathe without choking. They coughed and spluttered as they laboured over the stones. But they'd covered barely a quarter of a mile when – as they climbed across a narrow ridge – they saw that their way back was blocked too.

Another molten river, thinner than the one behind them, but no less fierce in its heat, had spilled down from a rift below the crater and was even now reaching the sea in a malignant hiss of steam. They were marooned on a wedge of the mountain only a few hundred yards wide, unable to go forward, unable to retreat.

Exhausted, their faces scorched, they cowered down into a deep hollow between the rocks. Nell was bent as if with pain, but Dow realised that in fact she was laughing, in croaking, ashen gasps. The spasm passed, and she unbent again, smiling, her eyes red with tears.

‘What fools we are, Dow, you and me both. Look where we are – and yet consider how hard each of us had to battle just to be here. Consider how we
fought
to be allowed to die like this.'

Dow only tilted his head in confusion.

She was sitting back against the stone now, her breath recovered. She gave him a piercing glance, naked in its intensity. Then, coming to some decision, she extended her bared arms before her to show him the patterns of scar tissue written there. ‘You know, do you not, how scapegoats come to serve aboard their vessels? That they are those who have by evil fate been injured in some accident, or afflicted by some dread disease?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I had no disease, nor was I injured by accident.'

Dow stared. Did she mean… ?

Nell only nodded, looking at him squarely now, without shame. ‘I am a false scapegoat, as the creature Axay described me.' She raised her arms, as if in final evidence. ‘I did this to myself.'

Dow was silent a long moment, unable to look away from the multitude of wounds on her skin. Ash rained down between them, but the eruption seemed far, far away. ‘Why?' he asked finally.

She sighed, lowering her hands. ‘You must consider the life I led, home in Othrace. I was born to wealth, and born within arm's reach of power – but born a girl. Wealth was useless to me for anything but buying clothes and other trinkets, and power was denied to me by very gender. But it wasn't power or wealth I wanted anyway – all I ever wanted was to go sailing!

‘It's strange, I didn't even grow up near the sea. Our estate is in the country. But when I turned ten I was allowed to go and live for a while in our family townhouse in Siena, Othrace's capital city. My window there overlooked the harbour, and for the first time I saw ocean-fit vessels coming and going. I was enraptured – and from that day on all I wanted to do was go with them, to disappear like they did, over the horizon …'

Her gaze was lost in memory, and Dow, though startled to hear his own life echoed in hers, said nothing, only waited for her to continue.

Nell shook her head. ‘Oh, I tried everything, as I got older. I pleaded with my father and fought with my mother and stowed away on ships, but it was all futile. Women are simply not allowed on our vessels, except rarely as passengers, locked away in their cabins when sent with their ambassador husbands to rule the other Isles. Never as crew, never as sailors. I was laughed at as a silly girl, and forbidden from visiting the docks.' She paused, and her voice went low. ‘But then I conceived of another way.'

Comprehension chilled Dow. ‘Scapegoats,' he said. ‘Women are allowed to go to sea if they're scapegoats.'

She nodded calmly.

Dow studied her scars, the fineness and number of them. Surely no knife had done it. ‘But how did—?'

Nell raised her hands again. ‘This? This is not what I intended. I meant to do myself much less of an injury. But fate will not be mocked – as I think you and I both know by now. But yes, I decided that I must suffer an ‘accident', one that would disfigure me just enough to be fit to serve as a scapegoat.' Her observation of her own arms became wondering in nature. ‘Even now, that decision amazes me a little. I was only fourteen then. But once the idea came, my unspoiled skin seemed a trifling price to pay, if it allowed me to go to sea.'

She shrugged, matter-of-fact once more. ‘Yes, but what was my accident to be? I didn't want to cripple myself. It must be disfigurement only. And it must seem a genuine accident; no one could know that I had done it to myself. I thought then of the Caves. You see, not far from Siena, set under the hills of the shoreline, there are a series of great caves that folk from the town often visit to marvel at. One of them is known as the Ribbon Cave. The word Ribbon refers to the formations that have been carved into the cave's floor by droplets of water, falling over centuries – thousands of curving ripples and ridges in the stone, each one honed to a razor's edge of sharpness.

‘So cruel are these blades that it's impossible even for booted feet to walk there, and the cave – which otherwise is vast and echoing and magnificent to behold – can only be viewed from narrow ledges set high above the floor, in the walls. I'd visited there many times before with my family, and I'd shivered in delight, as children will, at the tales of unfortunates who had somehow fallen to the floor below and been cut by those terrible Ribbons. It was such tales that I now found myself remembering. I would visit the cave alone, I decided, and contrive somehow to descend to the floor, and then …'

She faltered, and stabbed a finger at her eye as if to wipe at a tear, but perhaps she was just scraping away ash. ‘I meant only to cut an arm maybe, and perhaps one side of my face. I planned to climb down and press myself against the Ribbons, just enough to draw blood. Later I would claim that I'd fallen and had been lucky to escape so lightly. But as you can see, my own intent betrayed me. While climbing down to the floor I fell for real, not in pretence, and landed full upon the blades …'

She smiled in response to Dow's look of horror. ‘It didn't hurt as much as you might think, there was only the sensation of skin …
parting
. But it was hideous all the same, and my clothes were no protection, no matter which way I rolled, there were only more Ribbons slicing …

‘My screams brought rescuers running – folk who had been visiting one of the other caves nearby. At great risk and even at some injury to themselves they retrieved me finally from the floor, and carried me back to my family. I remember little of what followed, for I had lost so much blood I was barely conscious. I was cut everywhere. Everywhere. I can only be grateful that the Ribbons supported me even as they sliced, and so none of the cuts were fatally deep. I survived, as you see me.'

There was still no shame in her, only a complete openness, as if she knew that Dow would make no judgement, but would simply understand. And he
did
understand, for had he not known a similar forbidden hunger for the sea? And had he not learned, just as she had, that there was a price to be paid if such forbidden hungers were to be appeased?

He coughed, asked raspingly, ‘Was it worth it?'

Her laugh was breathless, but certain. ‘Of course it was worth it! I've seen things from the high deck of the
Chloe
that would be fair payment for almost any injury. And yet, if you ask me am I content, then the answer is no. I have, in the end, won little. For we scapegoats may go to sea, yes, and we are honoured and consulted by our crews, but it's not for us to set the course of the ship, or to issue orders to its men, or to fight in its battles.

‘Can you imagine the frustration of it? To mix daily with officers no brighter or braver than myself, and yet to forever defer to them – still only a girl, still only an ornament, still useless. I can offer advice, yes, and I can hint and cajole, and sometimes get my way. But I want to
command
a ship, Dow Amber, not merely adorn it, or play as its charm and mascot.'

Again, the echo of his own thoughts and feelings in her words amazed Dow. And watching as she spoke, for the first time it seemed that he could see beyond her scars, as if looking through a fine net, to perceive that her face was just an ordinary face, not fierce or beautiful in any particular way, only trapped, and disappointed.

Which explained, perhaps, the last puzzle about her that Dow had never been able to solve.

‘And so,' he said, ‘Diego.'

She nodded pensively. ‘We were friends as children, as I said. In a way I was a little sister to him. He's an only child, you know, and was left on his own much of the time, with just servants for company. I was the one child nearby of a high enough status for him to play with.

‘Then when we were older it was more than friendship, at least on his part. He always said he wanted us to marry, but I never took that very seriously, for all that I was fond of him. I had no interest by then in being a wife, his or anyone's. I only wanted to sail. And so … the accident. But he surprised me. I expected he'd want nothing to do with me after that, but he was as attentive as ever, as if nothing had changed. He was very caring.'

Dow could not help but frown in doubt at this, but Nell, watching his expression, only gave a wise laugh.

‘You don't know him at all,' she said. ‘He's proud, yes, and too sensitive to insult – but he can be very faithful, and dogged too, when he wants something. After I became a scapegoat he followed me still, even though it meant serving on a Valignano ship, under a captain he hates.'

‘He still means to marry you,' Dow said flatly.

‘He does. Even though it would cost his reputation dearly, for it's not approved that scapegoats should wed.'

‘Do you mean to marry him?'

‘I didn't – not at first. I was grateful for his friendship after the accident, but I still had no desire to be a wife. I hoped that being a scapegoat might be enough for me. But it isn't, and he knows it isn't.

‘Which is why he's promised – when he has his own ship – that he'll further defy custom, and take me on board both as scapegoat
and
wife. He intends that we should share his ship between us, scandal though it would be. He's that devoted.' She shook her head in wonder, and perhaps in shame too. ‘I don't know why – I certainly don't deserve it. It's the big brother inside him, I suppose, or some boyhood idea of love or loyalty. But it only proves that there's more to him than pride and bluster.'

Her tone went wistful. ‘And I've been tempted. I haven't said yes or no to him yet – but I've been tempted. Oh I don't
love
him, but he knows that, and it doesn't seem to bother him. He's also too cautious a sailor for my liking – I'd have to push and urge him on. Still, together we would have a ship to command. And that's something no other man can offer …'

Dow sat nonplussed.
No
other man?

Nell was watching him again. ‘You see? I told you, you don't know him. But then you two have disliked each other from the first, and I don't think either can judge the other clearly. All you see is an arrogant and overbearing Ship Kings officer, and all he sees is an upstart peasant who doesn't know his place. I know – I used to see you the same way. At first, at least.'

She was staring at the thickening sky now, speaking dreamily, almost as if falling asleep. ‘How I hated you, when we first met. Do you remember? The day you were caught trespassing on the
Chloe,
in search of the compass?