“Still,” he said sulkily, “Neville said he picked up a disturbance in the continuum. He said something was coming.”
“Neville,” she said sweetly, “is a jelly-fleshed worrywart. The Lacrimae Mundi is sailing back to HEX through the Nowhere-at-All. We’re practically undetectable.”
“Practically,” he muttered.
She stood up and walked over to me. “How are you, Joseph Harker?”
“Very happy to see you back here, my lady,” I told her.
“Did anything unusual happen while you were down here waiting for me?”
“Unusual? I don’t think so.”
“Thank you, Joseph. You need not speak until next I tell you to.” She pursed her big lips and went back to sit on the bed again. “Scarabus, contact HEX for me.”
“Yes, my lady.”
He touched a tattoo on his stomach, a tattoo that looked a bit like something from the Arabian Nights, a bit like Dracula’s castle and a bit like the world seen from space. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his pupils were flickering with light—not glowing steadily, as they had when he had summoned the ship to the football field.
He spoke in a deep sort of voice then, the sort of voice you’d get if you dipped Darth Vader in a giant vat of maple syrup.
“Indigo? What is it?”
“We have the boy Harker, my lord Dogknife. A world-class Walker: He will power many ships.”
“Good,” said the syrupy wheeze. Even under whatever spell I was under, that voice made my skin crawl. “We are ready to begin the assault on the Lorimare worlds. The phantom gateways we will be creating will make a counterattack or rescue impossible. When they are empowered, the usual Lorimare coordinates will then open notional shadow realms under our control. Now, with another fine Harker at our disposal, we will have all the power we need to send in the fleet. The Imperator of the Lorimare worlds is already one of ours.”
“We have the Cause, Lord Dogknife.”
“We have the Will, Lady Indigo. How long until you dock here?”
“Twelve hours, no less.”
“Very well. I shall prepare a vat for the Harker.”
She looked at me and smiled, and my heart leapt up within me and sang like a cardinal in springtime.
“I would like to keep a souvenir of this Harker,” she said. “Perhaps a hank of his hair or a knucklebone.”
“I shall give orders to that effect. Now, good day,” and the tattooed man closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said in his own voice, “Ow. That left me with a killer headache. How was Dogknife?”
“Excellent,” she said. “He is planning our assault on the Lorimare worlds.”
“Better him than me,” said Scarabus, and he rubbed his temple. “Ow. I could do with a walk up on deck. Breath of fresh air.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ve spent the last couple of hours down in the map room, breathing the captain’s meal of raw onions and goat cheese.” She looked at me. “But I don’t want to leave the Harker here.”
Scarabus shrugged his thin blue-and-red shoulders. “Bring him with.”
She nodded. “Very well,” she said. “One moment.” She went through the door to the little pink bathroom and closed the door behind her.
The tattooed man looked at me. “You sad little creature,” he said. “Like a lamb to the slaughter.”
The Lady Indigo had not told me to speak, so I said nothing.
There was a tapping on the cabin door. Scarabus opened it. I couldn’t see what happened next, because the door blocked my view. But there was a thud, and a gasp, and Scarabus collapsed to the floor. The man who came in was wearing a hat and a coat and a silver face.
He raised a hand to greet me. Then he stripped off his raincoat and his hat. He was covered from head to foot in a silver suit of some kind, like a man wearing a mirror. He rolled the unconscious Scarabus behind the bed and put the coat over him.
I could hear the sink running. I knew that my Lady Indigo was washing her hands with the pink rose-smelling soap. I had to warn her that the Jay man was there and that he meant her harm. I tried to speak, but she hadn’t given me permission to talk, and so the words would not come.
Jay—if that was who the man in the mirror suit was— raised a hand to the suit and adjusted something above his heart.
The suit flowed and changed and . . .
Scarabus standing there in front of me. If I hadn’t been able to see the real tattooed man’s foot peeping out from under the coat on the other side of the bed, I would have thought Jay really was him. The illusion was that good.
My Lady Indigo came out of the bathroom.
Tell me to speak, I thought, pleading with her, tell me to speak, and I will tell you you’re in danger. This is not your friend. I am the only person who truly cares about you, and I cannot warn you.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s go up on deck. How’s your headache?”
The man who looked like Scarabus shrugged. I guessed that the suit didn’t work for voices. Lady Indigo didn’t press the point. She turned and went out of the room. “Follow me, slave Harker, and stay close,” she called.
I followed her up onto the deck. I couldn’t even begin to imagine not doing so. (The Joey buried deep inside me could—he kept on yelling and screaming that I should resist, run, anything. I kept walking. His words meant nothing.)
Above us star fields spun and blinked and whorled. Neville the jelly man hurried over as soon as he spotted us.
“I’ve checked all the instruments and portents,” he said self-importantly, in his sucking-mud voice, “and consulted the astrolabe, and they are all quite certain. We are carrying a stowaway. Some presence arrived on the Lacrimae Mundi about an hour ago. Just when I said I felt something in the pit of my stomach.”
“And a mighty stomach it is, too,” said the mirror man pretending to be Scarabus in Scarabus’s voice. I was wrong, then; the suit could do voices, too.
“I shall ignore that comment,” said the jelly man to Scarabus.
“What kind of stowaway, Neville?” asked Lady Indigo.
“Could be one of Graceful Zelda’s people trying to grab the Harker, so they can take all the credit,” said Scarabus. “You know how much she hates you. If she took your Harker back to HEX, it would make her look very good.”
“Zelda.” Lady Indigo made a face, as if she’d bitten into something that had turned out to be mostly maggots.
Neville hugged himself with his jellyfish hands and looked miserable. “She wants my skin,” he said. “Has for years. Wants a coat, Zelda does, one that’ll let her show off and still be warm.”
Before he could continue, Scarabus—Jay pretending to be Scarabus—looked at me and squinted. “My lady,” he said, “how do you know this is still your Harker? What if it’s some kind of changeling? They could have already stolen the boy away and left something behind that only looks like him. Some kind of spell creature, perhaps. Easy enough to do, even here.”
Lady Indigo frowned and looked at me. Then she gestured in the air with one hand while she sang three clear notes. “Now,” she said, “any spell that is on or around you is removed. Let us see what you truly are.”
I realized that I could speak again if I wanted to.
I could do anything I wanted to now.
I was back in charge, and, boy,