Bloodrush (Scarlet Star Trilogy #1)

Chapter 13 - New Arrivals

'I don't know if this boy is fearless or just plain mad. Then again, I'm not too used to nine-year-old human young. I told him what I was and he just nodded as if I had told him the day of the week. He hasn't stopped asking questions since I croaked a few days ago. Most humans just scream or faint. This one seems utterly delighted to have a faerie under his bed.

Maybe he is mad. Who cares? I think I'm finally safe.'

15th May, 1867

'Almighty's balls, boy. Not in the bloody toolbox! Spew somewhere else, you idiot! Bloody hell! It's on the spanners and everything,' yelled Master Bowder, the flushed and balding man screaming from the floor, body half-swallowed under a piece of machinery that looked so complex, it gave Juspin a headache just looking at it.

'Sorry,' he said, half-mumbling as he wiped his mouth. Now that the ship had come to a halt, the pitching and yawing was even worse. It was playing havoc with his stomach.

'I'm starting to wonder why I listened to your grandmother, and apprenticed you. If she hadn't helped raise my ma, then...' The end of Master Bowder's sentence was a violent shaking of his fists, greasy knuckles and all.

The engineer shimmied out from under the machine and sighed at his soiled tools. 'Bloody hell!' he spat.

Juspin had decided the Iron Ocean did not like him. Ever since he had been manhandled on board the Amitie in Plymouth, the waves had rolled and the wind had howled. The angry sky hadn't spared a scrap of sunlight, and the sea had battered the prow and flanks of the steamship day and night.

It must have despised him almost as much as his master at that very moment. Juspin shuffled awkwardly and made a show of squinting at the cogs and tubes and greasy cogs. 'So ... what's wrong with it?' he asked, quietly.

'Needs a whole new set of gears is what's wrong with it, lad,' huffed Bowder. The man was interminably irritable. 'Got spares, luck has it, but not the bolts. They're in the for'ard hold, right in the bow. Square-headed, 'bout yay long.'

Juspin nodded, but his legs didn't move. Bowder looked him up and down as he would one of his great steam engines, as if to check to see if he was still functional. 'Well, lad, get to it!' he bellowed, panicking Juspin into flight.

The boy skidded through the doorway of the engine room and trotted down the hallway, trying desperately to dig out his internal map of the ship. Four days, and already he was expected to know where everything was on this lurching, dripping ship. A wave of nausea rose and fell, and Juspin swallowed hard as he pressed on, mumbling directions to himself and worrying his carrot-hue hair with nervous fingers. He was desperate not to mess this task up. Just one would be nice.

After another few anxious minutes of jogging through dark corridors, sparsely lit by twitching lanterns, he finally came to a heavy door secured by a wheel. Juspin almost winded himself trying to loosen it, but finally, with a horrendous screech, it came free and spun for him.

The hold was darker than the corridors. In a stroke of brilliance, Juspin fetched a lantern from its hook and thrust it into the shadows. A dozen boxes wrapped in brown sheets greeted him, nothing more. The floor was thick with grime and crusted salt. Juspin held his breath as he wandered deeper into the hold, though he knew not exactly why. More crates, more boxes, more brown sheets. Juspin was starting to wonder whether he had made a wrong turn when he saw the curve of the bulkhead in front of him, and heard the dull crashing of the waves over the drone of the powerful engines. Those confusing bloody engines.