Phoenix Burning (20 page)

Toby jerked to wakefulness. It had been a long restless, night and it felt as if he had only just managed to fall asleep. Now he lay, unmoving, pointlessly pretending sleep as two uncles burst through his door. When they laid their hands on him, he started to fight.

He opened his mouth to yell and a cloth was shoved between his teeth, muffling his cries.

“Toby?” Ayla must have heard the scuffle. He pounded on the wall, trying to warn her, but his arms were tangled in his light blanket, then grabbed by strong hands and he was lifted out of bed.

Ayla began to bang on her own door, shouting for him, and Toby heard stirring from other cells as her yelling drew attention.

He was carried, fighting all the way, into the corridor where Mother Hesper waited, beside Father Dahon.

She signalled to someone behind him and Hideaki
stepped into view. “Sorry,” he mouthed and Toby strained back, but could go nowhere. There was a sting in his neck and Toby felt as if he had been plunged underwater. His limbs were weighed down and his head grew too heavy for his neck. He tried to lift his chin, but it had been glued to his chest. His head lolled. Everything went dark.

“Toby, the paddles are slowing.” The canopies outside the bridge shook with the volume of the captain’s roar. “We’re running out of power. Get down to the boiler room.”

“Where’s Harry? We swapped shifts.” Using the mast like a fireman’s pole, Toby slid from the crow’s nest. His feet stung when they hit the deck – he had misjudged the final jump.

“You know Harry.” The captain frowned. “I assume he’s sloped off for a nap. You deal with the power, I’ll deal with him.”

Toby nodded and sped across the deck to the hatch. As he ran he ducked under canopies that clattered in a sudden gust of wind. Poisonous spray hit his face. His cheeks burned but he wiped them quickly, opened the hatch and threw himself down the ladder. Again his feet hurt when they hit the ground and he frowned. He had been running around the
Phoenix
barefoot for years, he had calluses on
his calluses – his feet never hurt. He wondered briefly if he should speak to Uma. Then he realized that the
Phoenix
was moving up and down more sharply than ever. Their forward momentum had almost halted.

“
Harry!
” he shouted and he hit the passageway to the boiler room at a dead sprint. “What’s going on?”

Toby heard the paddle grind to a halt as he slammed through the door. Polly was waiting for him, hopping from foot to foot on her perch above the attemperator.

“Pretty Polly,” she shrieked. She was frustrated as hell, but using parrot speak, so Harry had to be around somewhere.

“
Harry
, where are you?”

“
Toby
, thank the gods!
I’m up here
.”

Toby looked up. Harry was hanging from the ladder that led to the blowers. His teeth and the whites of his eyes were all that Toby could see. It was as if Harry had been dunked in soot. “I think there’s a blockage.”

And that was when Toby felt it: the whole boiler was shuddering.

“Harry, get down from there, she’s going to blow!”

Harry’s eyes widened and he tried to start down the ladder. “I’m stuck!” he yelled. “I can’t get down.”

“What’re you stuck on?” Toby moved as if to run forwards, but Polly flew into his face, forcing him back
towards the door.

“My shirt’s caught.” Harry was struggling. The boiler started to make a high-pitched squealing noise.

“
Ashes
,” Toby whispered. “Take it off, Harry, now.”

Harry squirmed, trying to get out of his shirt and Polly screamed into Toby’s face, no longer caring that Harry heard her. “
Get out, get out, get out!
” Her claws slashed at his forehead.

Pale with shock, Toby stumbled into the passageway, blood pouring into his eyes, trying to fend her off. “Polly,
stop
!”

But Polly didn’t stop, not until he had reached the end of the passageway and gone through the buffer door.

“Harry…” Toby tried to go back and Polly flew at him once more, screeching.

“There isn’t time,” she squawked, her wings a flurry of colour and dusty feathers.

There was a moment of breathless inhalation as the air seemed to be sucked into the passageway then a snapping of tension. The ship rattled like a can. There was a blast of heat, a roar louder than thunder and Toby grunted as if he’d been hit in the solar plexus.

“The door’s holding,” he gasped, cold with shock. On the other side, half of the ship was missing. The heart of the
Phoenix
had been ripped out and he knew it was his
fault. If he hadn’t swapped watch with Harry…

“Harry,” he whispered. If the explosion hadn’t killed him instantly, his friend had already been dragged into the salt.

He looked down as his feet began to burn. The blast door was no longer holding back the corrosive sea and water was sloshing around his ankles. Banging on the other side told him that junk had flooded in. They were sinking.

The
Phoenix
was going down.

Toby ran for the ladder. The captain would know what had happened and emergency protocols would already be in motion, but some of the crew were sleeping off a night shift. He had to wake them.

The
Phoenix
creaked and the whole ship tilted sideways. Toby gripped the rungs just ahead and found himself hanging at a right angle to the ladder.

He had to get through the hatch. He used the ladder like monkey bars to drag himself to the handle, but the water was already at his waist. If he opened the hatch, would he flood the ship even faster?

Gripped with indecision, his survival instincts took over – if he didn’t open the hatch, he was going to drown. His waist was tingling as the salt soaked through his clothes and began to burn. He hammered on the handle,
but it didn’t turn. The explosion had warped the opening enough to make the hatch stick. Hysterical laughter burst from his chest – he was going to drown inside a closed passageway of the
Phoenix
.

Screeching, Polly flew at the hatch, but there was nothing she could do. Toby was floating now in the orange water, his mouth pressed against the bubble of air trapped behind the closed hatch cover.

He gasped and tasted salt that seared his tongue and scalded his throat.

His eyes flew open.

Toby was floating. Literally. He had sagged on to his knees and the stinging salt had reached his waist. The burning of his cheeks told him that his face had just received a dunking.

He jerked upright and tried to wipe his skin clean, but his hands were trapped behind him. He shook his head, which felt as if he’d spent a whole night drinking Peel’s hooch. He was dizzy and sick and felt his mind was filled with fog.

Where was he?

The important thing was to get the hell out of the salt. It was difficult to get to his feet without using his hands
or arms, but not impossible. When he was standing, the water only reached his knees. He tried to wade out of it and was jerked to a stop by the pressure of metal on his wrists.

They had found the inverter in his cell. It was the only explanation. And he had been chained out here to die. He cleared his throat – it was so dry that it felt thick and coated with felt. How long had he been imprisoned there, unconscious, while the tide crept up his feet, his ankles, his legs, his waist?

He shook his head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was, how high would the tide get? Would he drown or be eaten alive by the acid currents that swirled around his feet?

“Toby?” The voice was barely more than a whisper.

Toby turned, but for a moment he was so dizzy that he couldn’t see. Then the fog left his vision. Yes, he was chained to a metal stake, but he was
not
alone.

Summer’s hands were secured in front of her and she was gripping the post they were chained to as though the rising tide might tear her from it and drag her away.

The ends of her hair were wet. So she had woken before Toby and risen to her feet. On Toby’s other side Moira, Cezar and Lenka remained sagged downwards, chins resting on their chests. Cezar’s breathing was coming
in rasps but Lenka’s face was closest to the salt, her fine blond hair flying upwards in the breeze from the sea, as if repelled by it.

Chains looped from each wrist to join a central rusting ring, long corroded by the salt air.

“We’ve got to wake them.” Summer’s face was pale and terrified. “They’ll drown.”

Toby blinked hard to clear the film from his eyes and nodded. He backed to the stake and stretched his arms behind him as far as he could. He could just reach Lenka with the tips of his fingers.

He looked at Summer. “Can you get to Cezar?”

She shook her head and her knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip.

“All right.” Toby managed to scrabble a tenuous hold on Lenka’s collar and pulled her closer to him. The salt sucked back, trying to haul her into the tide. “Lenka!” His shout was loud enough to rouse the gulls that sat on the nearby cliff.

They lifted into the air with raucous squawks and Toby’s attention fell on an opening in the wall beneath their perch – a passageway that stretched back into the darkness.

He swallowed hard. “It’s the maze.”

“What?” Summer’s gaze followed Toby’s.

“The next challenge,” Toby muttered. “It was meant to be a maze. I thought we’d be doing it together, but the others must be doing it alone. I guess they have to find us before it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

Toby tried to gesture at the sea, but his tied hands prevented him. He tilted his head instead.

Summer gulped and then her blue eyes narrowed. “How do you know it’s a maze?”

“Ayla told me.” Toby wanted to clear the salt from his stinging cheeks and eyes. He settled for rubbing his cheeks on his shoulders. His eyes still ached. “Lenka! Come on, wake up.” He shook her collar and she groaned, her head lolling.

“Cezar!” Summer started to shout.

It was Moira who woke first, jerking on her chain like a fish on a line. Her spiky blond mohawk flopped into her face and she went face first into the water, only to splash back up shocked, but instantly wakened.

“What the
Sun
?”

“Get out of the water,” Toby snapped.

“Wha…?” Moira struggled to her feet and stood swaying.

“Cezar’s waking,” Summer called, and Toby turned to see the other boy stirring.

“Come on, pal. On your feet.” As Toby’s attention turned, Lenka slipped sideways out of his grasp. She splashed into a wave and her flyaway hair was flattened to her head.

“Moira, you’re nearest – get Lenka,” he called.

“Do I have tae?” Moira sighed, but she was already kneeling back down and using her shoulders to boost Lenka’s head out of the water and back towards Toby. Between them they managed to get the girl leaned against the stake, where Summer was willing to hold her steady.

“Now Cezar.” Toby cocked his head and Moira nodded. Then, as Toby splashed to his knees to complete the same manoeuvre, she hesitated.

“This is a challenge, right?” She frowned.

“So?” Toby glared up at her.

“Why the Sun would I want tae help youse?”

“It’s not me you’re helping, it’s Cezar, come on.”

Cezar was moaning again and the tide was pulling his trousers. His skin was already red where the salt had burned him.

“Still competition, ain’t he?”

Toby blinked. She was right. What had he been thinking helping Lenka and Moira when he and Ayla needed to win?

“Toby says the challenge is a maze. We’re not competing.” Summer said suddenly. “We’re the prize.”

“She’s right.” Toby’s jaw tightened. “It doesn’t matter what we do, the
loser
will be the last one out of that tunnel.” He glanced at the opening in the wall.

Moira turned to follow his gaze. “You’re saying we just have tae sit here and wait?”

Toby frowned as he nodded. “Why
us
?”

“We’re all blond,” Summer answered him. “We’re Suns. The Moon has to follow the Sun – that’s scripture.”

“So they have tae find us?” Moira sneered. “Shouldn’t be hard. The streets of Glasgow’re a bloody maze.”