Joe waited until the midshipmen had all gone and then coughed in case Kite had forgotten he was there, but he hadn’t. He glanced over while he gathered together the cups and glasses.
‘Don’t smoke in here,’ he said.
Joe put the cigarette case away.
‘Filthy habit,’ Clay said unexpectedly from the corner. He shot Joe a dark look, but then he glanced at Kite to see if it was all right and settled back against the wall when Kite smiled. It was unnerving. It was a child’s manner in a middle-aged man. Joe’s neck crawled again when it occurred to him to wonder if Kite had done whatever necessitated the crutch.
‘What the hell have I done to you?’ Joe asked him, mainly teasing. If he could get Clay on his side, that would help a lot. Someone with keys and access to desks and papers. He didn’t have any kind of plan yet, but access was always a good thing.
Clay gave him a look of such black hatred that it stuck for days afterward. With no other warning, he dipped his hand right into the brazier next to him, picked up a red-hot coal, and flung it at Joe’s face.
Joe dived out the way, but the coal hit him on the side of the neck anyway. Even the brief touch burned.
Kite was already across the room, guiding Clay’s hand down into the water pitcher. ‘Go and get a bandage on that. And then – that reminds me. Lieutenant Wellesley says your cat is stuck in the rigging again.’
Clay made a weird, animal hiss at Joe, but stumped out. Joe frowned. There was something discomfiting about Clay. It made him feel like he would have if the man had been crabbing backwards around the deck with an obviously broken back and every sign of enjoying himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kite said quietly. ‘There’s no use getting angry with him, he’s …’ He touched the side of his own head. ‘We play hide and seek when we’re off watch.’
Joe couldn’t imagine Kite playing with anyone at anything. ‘What’s his problem with me?’
Kite sank a rag in the water jug, squeezed it out, then handed it to Joe. ‘He doesn’t like change.’
Joe pressed the cloth to his neck, then looked round when someone opened the door. Mrs Castlereagh. Thank God.
‘All done?’ she said.
‘All done,’ Kite said, a little tightly. Joe realised that Kite was waiting for her to bring up the argument they’d had before.
‘I’ll go,’ said Joe. And then, ‘Where am I going?’
‘No, you’re sleeping here or you’ll get yourself killed,’ Kite told him.
‘What? Why? I’m not French.’
Kite only gave him a slow, tolerant look which said quite clearly that, given the circumstances, he was willing to give Joe another few hours to catch up on the obvious facts. ‘I’d suggest you don’t mix too much with the crew, or if you do – pretend to be from Jamaica or something. The officers are fine, they’ll look after you, but a third of the sailors are pressed from prison hulks. We can keep them in fair order, but this war turned filthy a while ago now and everyone has very personal grudges towards anyone with an accent like yours.’
Joe stared at him. ‘You kidnapped a third of your crew?’
‘Welcome to His Majesty’s Navy,’ Kite said, and moved out a chair for his sister.
Mrs Castlereagh told Joe to call her Agatha. She was staying the night in the stateroom as well, Joe suspected to make sure that he and Kite didn’t kill each other. With her there, it felt safe – and warm, because the second she arrived, she lit two more braziers and damn it if the coal stores were running out, because everyone would freeze to the floor if they didn’t get the room heated up. Kite dipped his head and only looked grateful that she’d taken charge.
She broke out some more wine. After a couple of glasses, she and Kite were telling stories about the Spanish navy; or rather, she did, and Kite filled in the small spaces. Before long, Joe began to see that when she was nearby, Kite deferred to her. It was such a relief to know someone had a leash on the man that Joe wanted to hug her.
Agatha pushed to see how much Spanish Joe could get. Nine-tenths seemed to be the answer and, looking uneasy, Kite told him he had a genteel accent, the kind people learned at boarding school.
‘I definitely didn’t,’ promised Joe. ‘My master in Londres bought me before I was even born. Though who knows. Maybe in another version of things.’ He hesitated, then told them about the Psychical Society, and the false memories that weren’t false at all, that matched up between people who had never met. Madeline. But not the man who waited. He wasn’t giving Kite that, not for anything.
Agatha and Kite glanced at each other in their twinnish way. They weren’t twins; Agatha was older, Joe’s age.
‘Is there anything else like that?’ Agatha said. ‘Things you know but shouldn’t?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t know about the Spanish until today.’
‘Don’t,’ Kite said to her. ‘Please.’
Joe was silent at first, painfully aware that they were treating him far better than they had to. He was sitting in the stateroom with the captain and the surgeon, drinking their wine, when Kite could have put him in some dank little cell somewhere. Joe had to screw up a lot of nerve to risk it. ‘Look, chain me to the mast if you want, but I can’t not ask. Why did you ask me about the Kingdom before? What do you know about me, what do you want me to remember?’
‘I told you not to ask me again.’
Agatha looked hard at Kite. ‘Tell him.’
‘No.’
‘You,’ she said, very soft, ‘owe me this, Missouri. You will tell him.’
Joe had seen people struggle less with a crate of bricks than Kite did under the weight of his sister’s stare. He’d never known one human being control another so completely. He couldn’t tell if she had something over Kite, or if this was just what having a sister was like.
‘Why’s he owe it you?’ Joe said.
‘Because he killed my husband, so he owes me for ever,’ Agatha said mildly.
The way she looked at Kite then made Joe shrink inside. She was studying him like he was a machine; one that was running down now but still just useful enough to maintain. However relieved Joe had been before to know she had some control over her brother, he didn’t feel it any more. He wished that they would just let him go away and sleep somewhere else. He could feel the air crackling between them, and the longer he sat there, the more likely it seemed that he was going to end up electrocuted.
Kite was looking right away now, into the far corner, as if he were trying to will himself somewhere else.
‘So the Kingdom,’ Agatha said. She said it normally, but it wrenched Kite’s eyes back to them in the same way a yank on a chain around his neck would have.
Joe shifted, so uncomfortable now that he wondered about pretending to be more seasick than he was, just to duck out. He wanted to tell her to be less savage, but maybe she was right, maybe this was justice.
‘The Kingdom came from your time,’ Kite said to Joe. Every word twisted out like a tooth. ‘It’s how we know about this place. It sailed from Eilean Mòr in eighteen ninety-one. Surveying for that lighthouse. But they sailed home without going back through the pillars. They ended up off the coast of Southampton in seventeen ninety-seven.’