The Frost Child by Eoin McNamee Read Free Book Online Page B

weather. In front of her was a small cooker on gimbals, and a sink beside it. She lifted the kettle from the cooker and put it under the tap. The water boiled quickly and within minutes she was back on deck with two mugs of steaming tea.

    “Thanks,” Owen said, setting his mug down on a shelf that seemed made for the purpose. He was engrossed in the maps, his eyes moving from the spinning Mortmain to the old parchment.
    “I need to look at these,” he said. “Would you go into the bow and keep a lookout?”
    Cati, grumbling a little, made her way forward, expecting to be exposed to the waves. But she found it was cozy, crouched in the bow, as long as you ducked sometimes. The weather, if it could be called weather, went straight over your head. She munched contentedly on a chocolate biscuit, beginning to feel a little at home on the
Wayfarer
.
    At the tiller Owen puzzled over the symbols. The place with the tower was obviously the City of Time, Hadima. And the Workhouse was obvious as well. There was a plain, almost shapeless white symbol on the map, and if you touched it, your hand burned with searing cold. So that had to be something to do with the Harsh. But what or where was the pillar, and the silvery knife? The pair of sightless eyes, the elegant glass flask, the delicately shaped woman’s ear, or any other of the dozens of symbols on the map?
    He sighed, wondering if he would ever master the map, or the secrets of the Mortmain, which moved precisely in its mounting, reacting to each movement of the tiller under his hand.
    He was tempted to steer the
Wayfarer
toward one of the unknown symbols—the red hand, or the fiery horse—but in the end he decided to sail toward the place that he knew: Hadima. Apart from anything else, it was the last place he had come across the Harsh. He moved the tiller until the signs for the Workhouse and Hadima were aligned. The bow came around until the boat was on course. Owen wasn’t sure if he should go all the way to Hadima, but it would be good to see Rosie again.
    Rosie awoke on the stone step in her cell. She had a headache and her head felt fuzzy. Her side ached where she had lain on the stone, and as she felt her body gingerly there were bruises and sore patches, as if she had been dragged back to the cell.
    She sat up, vague memories running through her mind. Johnston had taken her to the kitchen and fed her … then she’d collapsed—a drug of some sort in the tea, perhaps. After that there was … something … just out of reach. … As she searched for it a snatch of music drifted through her head, then a stab of pain drove it away.
    She shook her head impatiently. She was cold and hungry and a prisoner. It was about time she did something about all three. She took a little mirror from an inside pocket and looked at herself. She was also grubby, and her hair was a mess. Then an idea occurred to her. There was a large crack under the locked door, more than enough to slip the mirror through. Rosie crawled to the top of the stairs and pushed the mirror under. There was just enough light to see the big padlock that held thedoor. Rosie barely dared to breathe. Her captor had made a mistake! He had put the lock through the two rings that held the door, but he hadn’t bothered to close it. If she had something that could reach it, she could knock it off. She looked around. Perhaps underneath the foul water …
    Despite the cold she took off her shoes and stockings and hitched up her skirt. She gingerly put her bare foot into the water and shuddered at its oily, unclean touch. Resisting the urge to jump back onto the step, she put the other foot in, then bent down and started to run her hand along the floor under the water. She groped around for a few minutes until her hand touched something slimy, which seemed to squirm momentarily in her grasp. With a shriek she jumped back. Her heart hammered in her chest.
Come on, Rosie
, she said to herself.
Who knows what else old