The Iron Ship (45 page)

“Yes dear,” said her husband. Arvell Kressind-Hamafar was brother to Gelbion, but two more dissimilar men one could not hope to meet. He was as meek as his brother was bellicose. A pale, thin man, insubstantial seeming, as if his wife’s cruelty had flattened the spirit out of him in the same manner as a roller flattens steel in a mill, mercilessly and automatically. He smiled nervously, then stopped, then started again, searching his wife’s face all the time for guidance as to what he should be doing. He flinched as she scowled at him.

“Yes dear!” she repeated sharply. “See, Trassan, what level of conversation I have to put up with here! Look, I say Arvell, what I have to put up with.”

“Yes dear,” began Arvell.

“Oh do be silent, you stupid man! Can you not see that Trassan is in the middle of talking. Is that not so?”

Trassan was not, but his aunt never let the truth get in the way of her pronouncements.

“Such a nice boy. Look at him! Working with Arkadian Vand. I often say to the ladies how clever you are, Trassan! How rich you must be. How
rich
! Such prospects, such a
catch!
How goes your wooing?”

“I don’t know about wooing,” said Trassan. He smiled sheepishly at his cousin Ilona, at the other end of the rectangular table, where she was seated facing her father at the table’s head.

“I know! I know! Everyone knows! You are to wed Vand’s daughter? A good match. A good match!” she said. Her habit was to shout the second word of these repetitions. Conversation with her was arduous. “I am sure she is slim! And beautiful! Not like me, oh no, so sad. Oh, no more, absolutely not! I was quite the sylph in my earlier days, but even though I eat like a bird my boy, a
bird
, I cannot fit into my bridal gown any longer.”

Trassan tried his best to keep his eyes from her plate. Between her barking, the woman had demolished half of the cheese, each knife-full larded onto sweet biscuits. She waited for Trassan to say she was not as large as she insisted. He managed a tactful mumble to that effect.

“You see! Manners my dear! Manners! You would do worse, Ilona, than to find a good, rich man like Trassan.”

Ilona gritted her teeth. She was as slim as her mother was fat, as spirited as her father was broken. If she had not been, she would have been driven insane long ago. “Yes mother,” she said.

“He’s the boss, chop. The boss,
chop
!” Cassonaepia bellowed.

“It has been a long time since we last saw you, Trass,” said Ilona. She smiled impishly at him. “Why do you avoid visiting our lovely home?”

“I wouldn’t say I avoided it,” he said. Wouldn’t say, but he did avoid it. Nobody wanted to spend time with Cassonaepia if it could be avoided. “I am terribly busy with the ship. We must be ready to sail in spring.”

“I read a book—” began Ilona.

“And of course, we can all believe what we read in those, can’t we?” whooped Cassonaepia derisively. “I prefer to put stock in my own eyes. My own eyes!” she bawled. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, yes it is dear,” Arvell agreed meekly.

“Tell me about this book, Ilona,” Trassan said, mindful that Cassonaepia was drawing in another huge breath.

“A book of polar exploration, by the Oczerk adventurer Rassanaminul Haik.”

“I know the one, I read it myself.”

“I hope you have done more preparation than that,” Ilona said.

“I am sure he has, dear!” hollered Cassonaepia, annoyed that the centre of conversation had moved from her.

Trassan ignored her. “Yes. Of course.”

“You’ll be leaving in spring when the ice breaks?”

“That is the plan. The ice does not recede, to the best of current knowledge, until the beginning of summer, but it is a lengthy voyage to the deep south. We intend to arrive as the ice thins, allowing us through. Where it does not part, the engines and prow of the
Prince Alfra
should force a way for us.” Trassan warmed to his subject, despite the banging headache his aunt’s monologues had given him. He placed one hand flat upon the other, pushing the lower hand down. “Our engines are so powerful, and the weight of the ship so great, that I believe we shall be able to break our way through. Floatstone ships cannot do this. They become snared in the ice and cannot move until it breaks again, or they are carried toward the heart of the Sotherwinter by the gyres of the ice and are trapped there forever.”

“Trassan!” Ilona said delightedly. “How ingenious. But did not Rassanaminul have wooden ships? That is the Ocerzerkiyan preference.”

Trassan tapped at his plate. “He did. And he lost three of the four. A wooden vessel caught in the ice is crushed into matchsticks by the pressure of it. The ice moves, you see, with tides and storms. It is water after all.”

“I have a passing familiarity with hydrodynamics,” she said.

Trassan raised an eyebrow.

“Unlike you, cousin, I have little to do other than read. I grow sick of novels.”

“Sick! Sick she says! Well, always got her nose in a book this one! She should be out,
out
! Looking for a husband! Waste of time. Books. Yes.” Cassonaepia bit noisily into her food. During the space of Trassan and Ilona’s exchange, she had eaten half the lobster. Her husband nibbled timidly on his own food. His wife became preoccupied with complaining loudly about the quality of her ham to her footman, so Arvell made an attempt at conversation.

“There is money in this expedition of yours?” he said quietly. Cassonaepia’s eyes rose from her food at his temerity to speak without permission, but the footman drew her attention back to the meat. Arvell gave a grateful look to the servant.

“Oh yes!” said Trassan, enormously relieved that Arvell had brought the subject of money up first. “This is a marvellous opportunity. There have been no intact Morfaan cities found anywhere else in the world.”

“Oh ho! Oh ho! Here we go, my lad. Who’s to know the place isn’t a gutted ruin? What then?” hooted Aunt Cassonaepia.

“The others are as they are because they have been looted and pillaged for materials greatly over thousands of years,” continued Trassan. He spoke hurriedly, fixing his attention on Arvell in case he retreated back into his shell. “Vand has made a fortune from the items he has found, although Persin has stolen much from him by violating my master’s patents. That is Vand’s great talent, the rediscovery of the Morfaan’s mastery of the physical arts, and reintroducing them, improved naturally, into our modern world. Imagine what he could do with undamaged devices. We will advance the causes of who knows what sciences. The knowledge of the ancients is ours to take!”

“Vand has no money himself?” said Arvell.

“Ridiculous!” huffed Cassonaepia. “The man is richer than King Brannon. King Brannon!”

“Of course,” lied Trassan, “and he has invested heavily in it. You are too shrewd for me uncle. You have seen through the purpose of my visit.”

“Which is?” asked Cassonaepia.

“Until we have the licence secured to cross the great ocean we are restricted to offering opportunities to a select few. I already have notes of intention from the Westerhalls and the Canderbridges.”

“You want to borrow money from me?” said Arvell.

Trassan laughed. “Not borrow, uncle. I thought that you, as family, and knowing of your nose for a good earner, might appreciate the opportunity to share in the wealth my expedition will generate.”

A calculating gleam entered Arvell’s eyes, a flicker of the man he had once been. “You had an accident, as I recall.”

“A small incident. A teething problem, you understand. New technology.”

“Quite,” said Arvell.

Trassan lowered his voice. “Between you and I, I fear it was sabotage. What does that tell you of our chances, if our rivals in Maceriya, naming no names, attempt to disrupt our efforts by subterfuge?”

“You cannot have my money!” shrieked Cassonaepia. “How dare you!”

“It is not your money,” said Arvell quietly. He grew brave. “It is mine. You forget yourself.”

“Oh! Oh! And I have done nothing! Nothing at all. That’s right, that’s right!” Cassonaepia drained her glass. A footman hurried forward to refill it. “You have done all the work, never mind that I sweated and struggled, struggled, I tell you,
struggled
to bring up our ungrateful daughter here while you were off gallivanting with your friends.”

Trassan doubted that Arvell had ever been allowed out to do anything so interesting as gallivant.

“Now dear...”

“Stupid man!” The measure of wine, so recently poured, disappeared down Cassonaepia’s throat.

Arvell clutched the tablecloth, rucking it. “You embarrass yourself.”

“Come, Trassan!” said Ilona, standing with a sudden scrape of wood on marble. “I am sure you would like to see the garden. It has established itself very prettily since you were here last.”

“Yes,” said Trassan. “That would be lovely.”

“Mother, father,” said Ilona.

“Aunt, uncle,” said he. They got hurriedly down from the table.

Cassonaepia’s hooming and hawing boomed around the house as she put Arvell back into his place. Another footman let the door open for them into the night. Someone appeared with furs for them both.

Trassan shuddered as they went out into the garden.

“You’ll have to do better than that, cousin, if you are to travel to the frozen wastes of the Sotherwinter.”

“It’s not the cold that is making me shiver,” he said. “It’s that beast of a mother of yours.”

“She’s getting worse. Once upon a time, she could keep a certain appearance of charm, now she acts as she pleases. She has isolated herself, and grows more strident for lack of company to correct her.”

“I am sorry for you.”

“You have no idea at all, Trassan, so don’t you dare feel sorry for me.” Her eyes flashed with anger.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for feeling sorry. You always were the worst at dealing with other people.”

“I don’t have Guis or Rel’s knack, I suppose. I always felt happier with machines. They don’t answer back, and when they make as much racket as your mother, you can turn them off.”

She slipped her arm into his. “Come nearer me, I am cold.”

They walked around the edge of the garden, keeping to the colonnade that enclosed it. Not true grounds, but a courtyard at the centre of Arvell’s townhouse, it was nevertheless artfully laid out. A square of night overhead blazed with stars. The roses were leafless. Frost rimed the grass.

“Come and see the garden. Gods, Ils, couldn’t you have come up with something more convincing?”

“Mother won’t notice. She is blind as to how others really see her, or what they think. She lacks the ability to judge the feelings of others, that commonality of spirit. Ironic really, as she is immensely paranoid about the way others see her. I think if she had the tiniest bit of empathy, she’d be horrified. Fear is what makes her the way she is. She lacks the insight to see it.”

“She will sulk at our absence.”

“She will, but she never does for the right reason. She’ll assume that I am trying to seduce you, not that we are up to something, or that we are trying to exclude her from our fun.” She sighed heavily, her lightness vanished. “She’ll sulk anyway, so what is the point in trying to stop it?”

“Are you trying to seduce me?” he asked. She did not answer. He continued in a different vein. “You are at least not like her. It is no wonder that your father is as crushed as he is. I often wonder why he has not left her.”

“Love, I suppose.”

“How can he love that?”

She pulled his arm so he came closer. “Love is blind, so they say.”

“Apparently it is also an idiot.”

She smiled. They had made their way around three sides of the cloistered way. They passed wide glass doors; a summer room, lights out, furniture covered in sheets for the winter.

“I find it hard to believe that Arvell is of the same stock as my own father.”

“Do you find the same difficult to see in me?”

“Ah, definitely not. You are a Kressind through and through.”

She stopped and pushed him against the wall, sliding a knee between his legs to pin him in place. She was no longer taller than him, nor stronger as she once had been. He had a man’s strength now, his muscles hardened by his trade. But he could not escape easily.

“You have me at a disadvantage.”

“You could just push me away.” Her sweet breath washed over him.

“We’re not brats any more. Wrestling would be a serious breach of decorum.”

“More’s the pity.” She looked up at him from under her eyelashes and bit her lip. “Perhaps a kiss for your cousin?”

“You
are
trying to seduce me!” Trassan looked pained. He stared off to the side. “Ilona, I’m engaged.”

“And not to me. Do you know how upset I was when I heard that? What’s wrong with me?” She shoved at his chest.

“We’re cousins.”

“A bad excuse. You never used to say that when we were little. You said we would be married when we were older.”

“Ilona! You can’t take a few stolen kisses as a promise of marriage. We were children. They were fancies, experiments. Nothing more than that.”

“It was a little more than a kiss, if I recall. And they meant more to me. I’ve been waiting for you. You made me a promise.”

He had, that he could not deny. “I... look, I just fell for someone else. I’m sorry.”

She retied the lacings of his collar as she spoke. “Sorry, sorry, always sorry. What is it with you and women, Trassan? Do you even try?”

He shrugged.

“What if I said I can get you that money?”

Trassan was too ashamed to tell Ilona he was hoping that she would open the way for him, and doubly ashamed that it was happening. “Your mother...”

“My mother is an outrageous old witch. I’ve had it with her. My father is not so stupid as he looks, he’s got plenty of money hidden away. He tells her about it from time to time, and she takes it off him, and wastes it on some extravagance or another. Do you know, she has had this house redecorated eighteen times in the last five years? She is destroying his fortune. But he always has one more pot of money hidden somewhere. My father has the spine of a mollusc when it comes to my mother, but if there is one person he will indulge more than her it is me.” She stepped back. “There, now you look like a respectable engineer, and not a rake.”