Fred pointed to the next wave and recommended that Joe hang on, and he was right; it gathered and gathered, the water rushing upwards towards the crest in ungravitational streams, which tipped as slow as molten iron cooling, then thundered down at them. White water burst right across the deck. The whole prow vanished into it before the figurehead came back up again. Wild things swung in the foam. The tilt of the deck was mad, but Joe couldn’t stop laughing.
Fred wondered aloud whether you could predict the motion of a wave, so Joe set off happily on fluid dynamics, which he liked a lot because M. de Méritens had once done an experiment with a whole tank of mercury just to prove a point, and now he always thought of whirling silver whenever anybody mentioned troughs and crests. As he talked, he saw Fred glaze over, and winced. He didn’t remember being fourteen, but he doubted you got the kind of mind that lost interest in dragons and started feeling passionately about waveforms until you were at least twenty-five.
‘Have a cigarette,’ he offered, because in his limited experience, children were instantly impressed by cigarettes. ‘I know we can’t get warm, but they smell of Jamaica. Fools your brain. And you’ll think of waveform equations whenever you smoke one,’ he added brightly.
Fred took one, stopped, and then began to laugh. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t recognise you until this very instant.’
‘What?’ said Joe. Fred was odd, but he wasn’t enough of a holy fool to forget who Joe was.
Fred didn’t have time to say anything, because Kite came out to them. He was just in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves. He must have been frozen; the burn scars had turned silver. He’d run, and he looked scared. Real, honest fear, like Joe hadn’t even imagined he would be capable of.
‘Tournier, get inside, for God’s sake. If you don’t die of cold, the next decent wave is going to carry you away.’
‘I’m fine—’
‘Now,’ Kite snapped, a lot more urgent than the cold or the sea really seemed to call for. The topmen in the rigging hadn’t even tethered themselves to anything yet. Fred said that was how you knew when things were getting dangerous.
Joe backed away, not sure what was going on. He didn’t want to leave Fred with Kite. He lingered not too far away. He couldn’t hear anything in the wind, and the rain made a crashing noise as it hit his ear on his windward side, but Fred was talking animatedly now, and he kept pointing at Joe. Kite was trying to stop him.
‘—taught me sine waves with a salt pot!’ Fred exclaimed, irrepressible. It should have been funny, but Kite was ageing, as though Fred were talking about a penchant for skinning live cats.
‘Tournier, what did I just say to you?’ Kite called.
‘I don’t want to drip on the floor, Clay will be angry,’ Joe said, not sure why he wanted so badly to pull Fred away, but he did. He couldn’t see what had made Kite run; Kite never ran anywhere. He imposed a speed limit on officers, even. Running panicked the men. He must have seen something bad, but Joe couldn’t tell what. ‘Fred, come for reinforcements?’
‘In a minute!’ Fred shouted, and then swung back to Kite, bouncing. Kite was trying to calm him down. Every line of him exuded the need to keep Fred quiet, but Fred, of course, was ignoring him.
Joe saw something in Kite break. He caught Fred’s shoulders and shook him. Joe couldn’t hear what Fred said, but Kite slapped him, hard enough to snap his head around.
Joe felt like he was falling, because he knew what would happen before it even started. Fred didn’t have the common sense to shut up and cower. Instead, his face darkened, and with the absolute indignation of someone who had never been struck before, he hit Kite back. Kite had slapped him to shock him, not to hurt him, even Joe could see that, but this was a righteous punch in the eye.
Or, Fred had plainly wanted it to be. Kite must have been punched a lot, because he saw it coming and smacked Fred’s fist away. He caught his wrist and twisted it up behind his back, but Fred was too far gone. He was yelling and kicking like a much smaller child would have, and if it had ever sunk in that you couldn’t strike a senior officer, the knowledge had evaporated from his mind now.
‘Kite! You can’t do that to him, he doesn’t understand!’ Joe shouted, frantic to make it stop. ‘Come on, you know what he’s like, he isn’t wired like other people—’
‘Tournier, get away from him right now!’ Kite snapped. ‘Get below before you fall overboard, I didn’t come all this way just for you to drown like an idiot.’
He wasn’t being dramatic. As he said it, the ship hit the trough of the next wave and a wall of water smashed down over them. Kite locked one elbow over the rail and Joe snatched at one of the lines that secured the sails. The weight of the water slammed the breath out of him, and as it receded, it dragged them all hard towards the side.
‘I know, but—’
‘Mr Tournier, he’s lying to you!’ Fred shrieked. He had lost his ordinary self. He was just enraged. If he had been a toddler, Joe would have called it a tantrum, but on a boy of fourteen it was something else. ‘It’s not right, lying is wrong, let me go—’
‘I will have you flogged,’ Kite said, and Joe couldn’t tell which of them he was speaking to now, or both of them.
‘Mr Tournier, you’re not really Mr Tournier—’
The crest of another wave broke over them. They were riding it well, and it wasn’t as frightening as the last surge, but it was enough to make Joe look away.
When he got the water out of his eyes and he could see again, Fred was gone.
Kite was still at the rail, staring into the heaving water.
At least four officers had told Joe what you were supposed to do if someone went overboard. Shout at the top of your lungs, and point with your entire arm, and don’t move, or the men with the lifelines wouldn’t know where to go.
Kite turned away and put the small of his back to the rail. ‘Get below,’ he said to Joe.
‘He could still be alive, aren’t we going to—’
‘He can’t swim.’
Joe scanned the water, willing there to be even a flash of blond hair somewhere, but there wasn’t. He looked at Kite again. It would be utterly stupid to accuse him of murder, even though Joe was certain that was exactly what had happened. An accusation like that – it would be Kite’s word against his, and Joe would be locked up for the rest of the journey. Or worse, locked up without kneecaps.
But he couldn’t just stand here and pretend everything was fine.
‘Is it that fucking important?’ Joe asked, fighting to keep his voice low. ‘That no one tells me who I am? So what if he recognised me? You’ve given me Madeline’s letters, for God’s sake, and I still don’t remember anything! Fred could have told me a name and I’d have been none the wiser, I think that’s pretty bloody obvious by now. Something else is going on here, isn’t it? It isn’t just about whether I remember or not!’
‘Your business is not the policing of this ship,’ Kite said, quiet and dangerous now. ‘Get back to your watch, Tournier. We’ll be coming into Edinburgh soon.’
‘My God!’ Joe heard his own voice go high. ‘A child is dead! Were you born a machine, or was there a time when you were human? Can you even remember?’