Read Online Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel - Free Book Online Page B

blade of cigarette smoke. I swallowed, feeling queasy.
    This man was not Matthias Grunel.
    I’d suspected it the moment I’d seen his sleeves ride up. And now I knew it with sickening certainty. It was the mention of Grunel’s cherished daughter. Hadn’t Kate told me Theodore Grunel had had a falling-out with his only daughter? Cut her off without a penny? Kate would not get a detail like that wrong; she was a voracious and attentive reader. I trusted her completely. Ginger Beard here was an imposter.
    From the drinks table he picked up a notepad and pencil, and brought them over to me.
    “If you were working the charts, you probably have a pretty good idea of the
Hyperion
’s coordinates.”
    I took the pencil and started writing some numbers, then scribbled them out and put on a show of chewing my lip and frowning.
    “What was it now?” I muttered. “You see, sir, we’d just gone through the Devil’s Fist and were mightily off course….”
    I was not going to offer up the coordinates to this imposter, whoever he was. My only thoughts now were of getting away.
    “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what the dean told you, but my memory’s never been my strong point—and the air was so thin up there. We were at twenty thousand feet, you know. I don’t think my brain was working its best.”
    “Ahh …” said Ginger Beard. “Of course. But you can probably remember the rough coordinates, no? The charts would have been before you the whole time, surely.”
    “I know, sir, it’s just …” I screwed my eyes shut, tapping my pencil against the pad, trying to look a proper imbecile. “It’s very embarrassing, sir. Please don’t tell the dean.”
    He was smiling hard at me, but it was not a kindly smile.
    “Just think of the reward that could await you. Think hard now.”
    I took a deep breath, wrote down a set of coordinates that were off by several hundred miles, and handed them over.
    “There! I think that’s it!” I said, standing up. “I really should get back now, if you don’t mind. Exams are coming up and—”
    “Strange though,” said Ginger Beard, and I felt myself start to sweat beneath my arms. “I thought the Flotsam was boundfor Alexandria over the Indian Ocean. These coordinates are well over the subcontinent.”
    Only a mariner of the sea or sky could glance at raw longitude and latitude and fix them instantly on a map.
    “Oh,” I said, downcast. “I’ve bungled it then. I’m sorry I’m not more use to you.” Heart pounding, I turned and stepped towards the door.
    “Lads!” Ginger Beard shouted. “I think our boy needs some help remembering!”
    The room was suddenly full of men, striding in from various doorways. Unlike Ginger Beard, they wore no velvet smoking jackets. Clad in dark trousers, coarse shirts rolled back to the elbows, boots, and caps, they emanated the unmistakable whiff of oil, Aruba fuel, and hydrium that marked them as airshipmen. Two of them seized me by the shoulders and pushed me back into the centre of the room, face to face with Ginger Beard.
    “Don’t lie to me, boy,” he said. “You’re no simpleton.”
    “I really don’t know,” I insisted, seeing the exact coordinates swirl before my mind’s eye. Part of me wondered if I shouldn’t just tell and be done with it. But if I were to tell them, they might just as easily bundle me out the window to keep me eternally quiet.
    “Shall I give him some stars to see?” said one of the men, pulling back his fist.
    “No,” Ginger Beard said sharply. “Show some respect, Bingham. This is Mr. Matt Cruse, pirate slayer. We knowall about you, Cruse. Read about how you bested our late lamented colleague, Mr. Szpirglas.”
    With a sickening jolt I wondered if these scoundrels were the last dregs of Szpirglas’s crew, come to wreak their revenge.
    “Don’t worry,” said Ginger Beard with a wink, “there was no love lost between me and Szpirglas. He and I parted ways years ago! I’m no pirate.