Ten: Aramis the Amazing

In the days that followed, Nail had little time to rethink or regret her decision to join the Blue Oriole's crew of shroud-walkers.

She was taken by Marcus Barkle through Piketon's maze of drab, cobbled streets to a warehouse in the port district. The structure was so vast that it could swallow dream-clippers whole.

The roof was made of canvas and could be rolled back as a vessel descended.

A kind of mounting structure had been erected, so that ships could be docked well above the floor, without collapsing their ventral masts.

Resting in this massive chassis was the Blue Oriole, a thirty-four gun clipper made of oak and brass and iron.

Her first glimpse was less than awe-inspiring. Nail had seen dream ships before and even studied their lines.

This ship looked hard-used and battered. The lines were a mess, hanging in clumps and knots.

Her canvas sails were spread on the ground, where groups of kids were hard at work with long needles and thread.

Up above, crews of carpenters and joiners and iron-smiths were at work, setting off a din of hammers and saws and voices.

A boy with impossibly long arms hopped down from a crate, where he'd been idling with an apple.

"This is Ballko," said Marcus Barkle. "He's Best Mate of the Shrouds. Think of him as the boss and you'll get on okay. He'll get you your stamp and then see you settled."

"My stamp?" Nail said.

"Your tattoo," said Ballko. He grinned and flexed his big bicep. There was a small blue mark there, in the form of a bird's wing.

Nail shook her head and said fiercely, "I don't want to be marked like some cow. I don't want to be owned."

The new boy screwed up his face and looked at Barkle.

"She ain't a stinking runner, is she? I got two of them already to look after and they're driving me crazy. Bawling and blubbering. I won't get a bit of peace until we're off-world."

Barkle shrugged and said, "It's the way it works, girl. We're all marked when we join the Oriole. Or any ship."

"Anyway, it's for your own good," Ballko put in. "Those bastards at the Admiralty is always after kids for their own ships, which ain't half so nice as the Oriole, I can promise you. The Impress Service has a half-dozen gangs hunting in Piketon right now. You're lucky we found you first."

"With the mark, you'll be safe," Marcus said. "It means you're already spoken for. You're one of us."

A fat, grinning man called Mr. King did the tattoo-work, splashing Nail's arm with rum and then working the needles. It stung like a hundred hornets, but she bit her lip and never made a sound.

Afterward, Ballko took her to a kind of bunkhouse. There were bars on the doors and a great, iron padlock on the door.

"I won't make bones about it," the boy said. "For the time being, you're more than half a prisoner. It gets better."

"But I volunteered," Nail said. "I agreed to come."

He grinned and winked. "Think you had a choice, do you? Think Old Barkle would let a spry monkey like you get away?"

She shrugged and said, "Anyway, I don't have anyplace else to go."

"Don't matter. Captain Marsh's orders. Too many idiots try to scram on us, before they see how good they got it. In you go now."

The room was low and dim and smelled of must and damp. She soon discovered that nearly a dozen children were locked in, some of them so terrified that they couldn't move or speak.

Others seemed delighted that they had been fed so well and taken out of their cramped, wretched families.

One cross-eyed boy -- he couldn't have been more than six or seven -- was dangling upside down from a bunk, his scrawny ribs showing.

"What are you doing?" Nail asked.

"I'm practicing," he said. "Pretty soon they'll make us walk out on them ropes. Ain't nothing under you but Dream. If you fall, you just keep on falling forever."

"Where did you hear that?"

"Everybody knows that's what happens if you fall into a dream. But I ain't going to fall. Watch this!"

He flipped himself up with surprising agility and began to walk along the edge of the bed, tongue between his teeth.

"What's your name?" Nail asked.

"I'm Little Blue Dean," he said over his shoulder. "My cat Percy is around here somewhere. They didn't want Percy to come, but Percy goes where he likes."

Nail looked around, but there was no sign of any cat.

The other children ranged in age from five or six to twelve or thirteen. The older ones were small and slight for their ages.

A group of kids had gathered around a cot, where a boy with raven-black hair was lying unconscious.

Crescent moons were tattooed above each of his eyebrows, giving his face a look of startlement. One one temple rose a swollen lump the size of a gelder-piece.

"What happened to him?" Nail said.

"Marcus Barkle clobbered him," someone said. "He's a dwarf, you know. Barkle, I mean. He ain't a kid at all."

"I overhead him talking with Ballko," said another child. "This one made a good chase of it and nearly got away. They said he was a conjuror of some kind. Said his name was Aramis. Aramis the Amazing."

Nail looked at the injured boy. He didn't look very amazing. His nose had been broken and his lip was split.

He first instinct was to take care of him, the way she had tried to care for her brothers and sisters.

But then she felt a clench of anger and bitterness. She had been abandoned. Left behind. She didn't want to look after anyone else, not now, maybe not ever again.

Aramis the Amazing would just have to take care of himself.

Next: The Old Wink and Blink