The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,71
foreign soil once his quest has been accomplished, or he will die when he sets foot back in England. Either way, there will be an end of it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE LANTERN GLIMMERED deep in the gloom at the far end of the orlop deck. Carpenter felt little comfort from the tiny speck of light in the stifling heat and stale air of the dark space. The cargo hold throbbed with the rhythm of the waves pounding against the creaking hull, and sometimes, when the din diminished a little, he could hear the scrabbling of rats in the bilge beneath him. He grimaced as he sucked in a breath heavy with the stink of rot and worked at the greasy ropes binding his aching wrists behind his back.
Here, on this ship of the dead, the spy fought back his fear. He had been in many tight spots in his life, but few as desperate as this. His plunge from the Tempest into the violent sea had smashed the breath from him. Brine had flooded his nose and mouth, the undercurrent sucking him into the black water below. Swept back up to the surface, he had seized a fleeting chance to gulp one last gasp of air, and as he did so he glimpsed the white face of the foul thing he had dragged into the seething cauldron. If Lansing of the High Family had been swept to an agonizing death at the bottom, his own passing would have been worth it. The last thing he remembered was feeling arms close around him as Launceston attempted to keep him afloat. He marvelled: Launceston, who had no feelings for any living thing, who slaughtered innocent and guilty alike with the dispassion of a butcher preparing meat for the table.
Carpenter screwed his eyes shut. For some reason, the hated Enemy had saved him and stowed him away here in the filthy, stinking hold. Why did they not kill him and be done with it? He was no use to them; he knew nothing. Perhaps his suffering was simple sport, or revenge against a man who had been a thorn in their side for years, however ineffective.
‘Do you miss your friends? Your family?’
He flinched at the voice and almost cried out. His senses had told him that the hold was empty, but he should have known better; the Unseelie Court were like ghosts. The voice was that of Lansing. He was disappointed that the hated Fay had survived too, but he should have expected it.
The Fay asked his question again, his voice measured.
‘I have no family,’ Carpenter spat, ‘and no friends either. I have nothing in my life except the work I do, so do not think you can torture me with false hopes.’
‘We are not the monsters here.’
The spy laughed long and hard.
Footsteps echoed as Lansing drew closer. Carpenter tensed, expecting to feel a blow or the prick of a dagger, but instead he heard the Fay’s passionless voice at a lower level as if he were crouching to look his prisoner in the eye. ‘There is great beauty in our world. Music that can move men to tears. Art. Philosophy. The joy that comes from being at the centre of life and all the wonders it offers. You think us demons, but we are not so different, our two people.’
‘And yet you have treated men like cattle, ready for the slaughter, since the beginning of time,’ Carpenter sneered. ‘Stolen our children for sport, or our youth or our lives. Turned women to stone, destroyed families and whole villages, blighted lives for amusement or because we did not bow and scrape before you.’
‘And men are so different? We do not hurt our own kind. Can the same be said of your privateers in Africa, or in the New World? Of your own Queen, in her own homeland? So much misery inflicted on those who worship by another creed – and yet pray to the same God!’ An incredulous laugh rolled out from the dark. ‘Since man walked tall, the world has been awash with blood. Not one race, not one country, has never raised a weapon in anger against another. Those who have suffered at your own hands far exceed the number we have tormented. And we are the monsters?’
‘You twist things to seduce me with words,’ Carpenter said. He let his shoulders sag.
‘Nothing is as simple as it is made out to be by men of power. They always twist things to achieve the