Coulton seemed easier, happier even. Certainly Jacob was happy for him. It wasn’t only that they were sailing for home, he knew. It was the brash kid, too.
So Frank Coulton has a heart, he remembered thinking, seeing him like that in those days. Who’d have guessed it.
Ribs, for her part, flashed like a salamander in and out of any room Jacob wandered past. It was almost like she was avoiding him, almost like she knew something he didn’t. She was everywhere, and nowhere, talking a mile a minute, her voice carrying to every corner of the creaking bark. Scrawny and quick, with eyes that weren’t the eyes of a child. On that first morning she wore a yellow child’s kimono, bought with care by Coulton from the silk district, but by the second morning she was wearing a rolled-up pair of sailor’s pants and a shirt torn at the sleeves and still too long, and these she wore for the rest of the voyage. It hurt Jacob’s heart to see her like that, wondering just what she’d had to put up with, what cruelties, how few kindnesses must never have been extended, but she didn’t seem to dwell on it. The only times he saw her silent was when she’d sit with Komako on a lashed crate on the poop deck, both of them peering out at the sun-reflected water, its flaring blades of light, two girls maybe of an age, a friendship maybe blossoming between them.
They were already clear of Sagami Bay by then, tacking west of Oshima Island, the wind strong and southerly. They were making for Taipei, and the East China Sea.
With little to do beyond keep tabs on the two girls, and drowse, and shield his eyes against the brightness, and observe the sailors swinging in the high rigging like macaques, Jacob’s thoughts would drift ahead to Scotland and Cairndale and the lonely stone buildings there. He’d been away too long.
There was almost no alone on that ship. Always a sailor would appear, grunting, working away at some task, or Coulton would emerge out of a hatch, restless, or the girl Ribs would run past on her way someplace. Or he’d turn suddenly and see the drughr, ghostlike, watching him from across the ship. He was already sleeping less and less. What Komako had done to Teshi was inside him, somehow, too, and he couldn’t let it go. He turned it over in his head, brooding, until it blurred with what the drughr had said about Bertolt’s little spirit, suffering, alone, afraid, and about how he could bring his brother back.
And so it was Jacob summoned the drughr to him, on the third night at sea. He went up on deck under the stars to be alone and he sat with his back to the railing at the foredeck, the warm wind in his beard. He crushed his eyes shut and he willed her to him, and she came.
You told Mr. Coulton about us, she said. Her voice wasn’t pleased.
Jacob, holding his knees to his chest, looked up. She was so close, he might have reached out and pinched her skirts between his fingers. Above the stiff ruffed collar, smoke curled and thickened where her face should have been. “There is no us,” he muttered. “You said death is just a door. You said it can be opened and closed, by anyone who knows how.”
Yes.
“Is he still … Bertolt? Is he still who he was?”
You must open the orsine. You must open it so that it does not close again.
“Will you give him a message for me?”
You will give it to him yourself. When you open the orsine.
“Why can’t you do it? What do you need me for?” He rubbed angrily at his face and glared off at the darkness. “Anyway I don’t even know how. You can’t open something you don’t understand.”
It is easy, Jacob. You must kill the glyphic.
Jacob stared at her. “Mr. Thorpe?”
He has gone by many names. But it is one and the same. Yes.
“I know what you are,” he said suddenly.
And what am I?
He swallowed. “Drughr.”
She kneeled, demurely, with her gloved hands in her lap. That is one name. There are others. I am old, older than your good Dr. Berghast, older even than your precious glyphic.
“Coulton says you’re evil,” he whispered.
Her head tilted then, as if giving him a long flat look. Almost like she were human. Evil, she said softly, is a matter of perspective.
“It’s not.”
Oh? And is a tree evil? Is dust evil? We are a part of a greater darkness, Jacob, that is all. The second side to the coin. And what are you? What is dust, what does it mean to have a power over dust? Is that not evil?
“Talents aren’t evil.”
Yours is a very particular talent though. Is it not?
He saw the silhouette of a sailor rise from the forecastle and cross to the railing. The sea was calm, glowing now with the eerie blue glow of jellyfish under the starlight. After a moment the sailor drifted back to his watch.