The Apothecary Page 0,80

children also. There’s no place a boarding party won’t find them.”

So we hurried to the apothecary’s cabin, where Jin Lo was already a swift-looking bird with fierce eyes and a cap of dark feathers. She must have gone below to take the avian elixir the moment the patrol was spotted.

“A falcon!” Count Vili said. “How terribly exciting.”

“It’s appalling that you’ve never done this before,” the apothecary said. “I do hope you won’t be a flightless penguin.”

“Oh, dear, is that possible?” Count Vili said. “I’d hate to be stuck here. I do want to see Andrei Sakharov.”

“And you want to help us stop Sakharov’s bomb,” the apothecary reminded him. “This is not a fan club.”

“Of course I want to stop it!” the count said, hurt. Then he took up the bottle of elixir and drank, making a noise of surprise. His shining face and plump body began to shrink and shift. Thirty seconds later, he was a large grey bird with a rounded bill and an enormous wingspan, like the albatross we had seen soaring in the wind off the stern. It was exactly the bird he would have wanted to be, and when he stretched his wings with delight, he smacked the falcon in the face with his wing tips. Jin Lo gave him a savage look. The albatross instantly drew in his wings and ducked his grey head in apology.

The apothecary handed me another vial. “Janie,” he said, “please give this to Shiskin.”

“Is he coming with us?”

“We can’t very well leave him here.”

“I bet he becomes a stool pigeon,” Benjamin said.

I ran to Shiskin’s cabin. He was still tied up, but the bonds would be too big for whatever kind of bird he became, so I didn’t bother to untie him. “A Soviet patrol is coming,” I said. “We can’t let them catch you. You have to take this.”

Shiskin frowned at the vial. “What is it?”

“There’s no time to explain. But I’ve taken it, and it’s fine. I promise.”

I helped him drink and waited for the slow, fascinating transformation, but instead there was a small explosion in the cabin. I flinched and covered my eyes. When I looked back, Shiskin wasn’t on his bunk. The knots that had held him were empty.

I looked around the cabin for a bird, wondering if Shiskin had become something Russian, and what a Russian bird might be, but I couldn’t find him. Then I saw it on the bedcover: a tiny pile of salt. I scooped every grain carefully back into the vial, pressed the rubber cap on tight, and ran back to the apothecary’s cabin.

“It’s Lot’s wife!” I said. “I thought it was the avian elixir!”

“Shiskin would never have agreed to become salt,” the apothecary said. He was packing things in the cabin away. “And we can’t have the Soviets find him. Put him in that small backpack, please.”

I picked up the little backpack, which was a miniature harness attached to a hard, cylindrical case wrapped in leather, and I slid the portable Mr Shiskin inside. The backpack would fit a large bird, and had tiny buckles. “Where’d you get this?” I asked.

“I adapted it from a design by a German apothecary.” He shoved his medical bag into the bottom of a sea chest and covered it with blankets. “He used to send medical prescriptions by carrier pigeon. Will you put the rest of those vials in?”

Each of the vials on the bunk fit in the palm of my hand, and I slid them one by one into the little backpack, alongside Mr Shiskin’s vial. One contained something golden, the colour of Jin Lo’s shimmering net. One was full of clear liquid, which I knew was the Quintessence. I could smell its sweetness even through the seal. One was so cold it burned my fingers, and I had to pick it up with my sleeve. I wondered if it helped Count Vili freeze time. The fifth was an amber colour and I didn’t recognise it.

“That’s an emergency supply of the avian elixir,” the apothecary said, “in case it wears off inconveniently early.”

I was going to ask him how we were going to get the elixir out of the backpack and drink it before plunging to an icy death, but Benjamin said, “The Pharmacopoeia! Where do we put it?”

I didn’t have to think. “With Captain Norberg’s logbooks,” I said. “Like in the chemistry lab.” Benjamin ran out of the cabin with the book.

The apothecary looked around the cabin to be sure everything looked