Read Online The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato - Free Book Online Page B

painfully into her waist and ribs. She considered the consequences of one of the bottles cracking and the shards of glass puncturing her skin, and, what was worse, some of those compounds seeping into her flesh; compounds that, in their nature, could be curative in the right amounts; but in the wrong amounts, fatal.
    Beyond this the harsh canvas crushed her face. A new fear was born: that she would suffocate, so in the short absences of the sailors she began to shift her body weight and dig herself an airhole. In the glow of a single lamp hanging from a bracket she could begin to understand that she was crushed because all of the supplies for the voyage were being piled into one side of the hold only. At the fore of the hold was a space cornered off by a muslin curtain, with yards of empty rough floor planks between the curtain and the rest of the supplies.
    At length Feyra could ease the dreadful pressure on her body, and look about her. In the quarter-light she began to examine the sacks and barrels, looking for insignia, searching for the deadly cargo that her father was to carry – anything to do with a horse, anything black. There was another strange thing: the supplies that crowded around her were good firm cheeses, quarters of meat, fine white flour, quite different to the usual shipboard fare of pemmican and ship’s biscuits. She extended her hand to the aft side and pushedthrough the sacks, the grain below the canvas whispering as she pushed her fingers through.
    As she watched the sailors come and go, she stayed as silent as she could, trying to still even her breathing. But it was not, it seemed, enough; one of the loaders set down his barrel and straightened up, holding out a hand, high and fingers splayed, to quiet his fellow.
    ‘What’s amiss?’ said the second, setting down his barrel likewise.
    ‘I heard a noise,’ hissed the sharp-eared one. ‘From the stack.’ He pointed to the barrels behind which Feyra lay. Her pulse thudded in her ears. The sweat from her fingertips clumped the grain.
    ‘Just a rat,’ said the second. ‘You’re hearing things.’
    ‘Just a rat? You should pin back your ears of cloth. Did you not hear our captain’s directions?
No animals aboard
– there’s not even a ship’s cat. So we’ll have to find it ourselves.’
    ‘Why no animals?’
    ‘
I
don’t know. Something to do with the cargo.’
    ‘All right. Let’s look if we must, but the main payload’s still for loading.’
    They came so perilously close that Feyra could smell a strong aroma of goat – one of the sailors was clearly a herder by day. The second, whose eyes were evidently better than his ears, looked directly at her. ‘Found it! Come ’ere, yer stowaway!’
    Feyra shrunk back, but the fellow held high an enormous rat, black and slick as oil and shrieking in fright. The shipman snapped his neck for him and all was silence. He slung the long body over his shoulder like a draftsack and carried him out to the night, followed by his sharp-eared friend.
    Feyra lay back burning with relief, heart thumping fit to leap out of her chest.
    Then a thump and shuffle and a curse alerted her; the sailors had one more item of cargo to load. And it was heavy. She watched as they manoeuvred their burden, four men now carrying something on their shoulders like pallbearers.
    A sarcophagus.
    All the pallbearers were veiled. Feyra might have thought that they were showing respect for what they carried, but for their demeanour and language. The bearers heaved and bumped the box, moaning and uttering oaths in a way that convinced her that they could not possibly be carrying a body. The sarcophagus seemed to be made of silver or pewter, some metal that gleamed low and grey. It was enamelled all over with curling designs picked out in colour, and was taken, with much groaning and shuffling and instruction and counter-instruction, to the muslin curtain. The curtain was drawn back, the burden taken beyond, and placed on