Drowned Wednesday. Гарт Никс

PROLOGUE

      A three-masted square-rigger with iridescent green sails that shone by day or night, the Flying Mantis was a fast and lucky ship. She sailed the Border Sea of the House, which meant she could also sail any ocean, sea, lake, river or other navigable stretch of liquid on any of the millions of worlds of the Secondary Realms.

      On this voyage, the Flying Mantis was cleaving through the deep blue waters of the Border Sea, heading for Port Wednesday. Her holds were stuffed with goods bought beyond the House and illnesses salvaged from the Border Sea’s grasping waters. There were valuables under her hatches: tea and wine and coffee and spices, treats for the Denizens of the House. But her strongroom held the real treasure: coughs and sniffles and ugly rashes and strange stuttering diseases, all fixed into pills, snuff or whalebone charms.

      With such rich cargo, the crew was nervous and the lookouts red-eyed and anxious. The Border Sea was no longer safe, not since the unfortunate transformation of Lady Wednesday several thousand years before and the consequent flooding of the Sea’s old shore. Wednesday’s Noon and Dusk had been missing ever since, along with many of Wednesday’s other servants, who used to police the Border Sea.

      Now the waters swarmed with unlicensed salvagers and traders, some of whom would happily turn to a bit of casual piracy. To make matters worse, there were full-time pirates around as well. Human ones, who had somehow got through the Line of Storms and into the Border Sea from some earthly ocean.

      These pirates were still mortal (unlike the Denizens) but they had managed to learn some House sorcery and were foolish enough to dabble in the use of Nothing. This made them dangerous, and if they had the numbers, their human ferocity and reckless use of Nothing-fuelled magic would usually defeat their more cautious Denizen foes.

      The Flying Mantis had lookouts in the fighting tops of each of its three masts, one in the forepeak, and several on the quarterdeck. It was their task to watch for pirates, strange weather and the worst of all things—the emergence of Drowned Wednesday, as Lady Wednesday was now