A single lamp flickered beside the door of the captain's cabin. The lock clicked under Indra's fingers, and the light guttered as he straightened up. "Two minutes."

Rav ducked past him into the cabin. The cage stood on a desk piled with the rest of the samples from the island. Here in the debris of papers, maps, and writing supplies, their tidiness sickened him. Too easily examined. Too easily sold.

He had a handful of dead crickets, but the dragonette did not respond as he held one close to her nose. "Please," he whispered. "You have to eat."

This was twice now she had refused food. Rav slotted a tin lid through the bars, tipped it flat and filled it with water. He rubbed the dragonette's head with one finger. She didn't stir. Indra leaned in the doorway, stone-faced.

"Could you leave just for a minute?" pleaded Rav. "I promise I won't let her out. She's scared. She won't eat if she's scared."

"Oh, so you know it's a 'she' do you?"

Rav twisted so the man would not see his face. So far, nobody but Indra had questioned if he had any connection to the tiny dragon. But the first mate was dangerous enough. Rav dropped the bugs he had brought by the dragonette's nose as Indra cleared his throat. He trudged past the tall man with a weight the size of a ballast tank on his shoulders.

"The captain ordered that you never go in there alone," said Indra to his back. "What makes you think I'd let you disobey a direct order?"

His punishing words were punctuated by the click of a lock.

"Move, cabin boy. I have real work to do."

Rav would have run all the way down to the hallway, out of the ship and across the island given half a chance. He forced himself to walk to his cabin. The balsa door shut out Indra and the hallway and the world. Rav slid down against it and buried his face in crossed arms. The creak in the hull passed beneath him. It followed the hallway, reached the captain's cabin, and paused. There was a long silence, then it returned again. Back down the hallway. Back through the ballast tanks.

Rav jumped at a knock on the door. He wanted to ignore it, but if it was the captain...

It was Manish. Tired shadows haunted his eyes, but he still managed a smile as he handed Rav a warm bowl. They'd had nothing but rice and dal for two days now. Manish glanced over his shoulder, then pulled a small paper bag from his pocket and slipped it into Rav's hand. With another smile, he was gone. Rav shut the door again. He had no appetite, so he set the bowl on a crate and opened the bag. Inside it were a few precious kernels of dried chicken and a note.

Try this.

Rav pocketed the bag. He would try anything. It dawned on him that if Skydragons ate birds as scientists thought they had, chicken might be closer to their natural diet than bugs. Mothers would have brought birds home for their young, their nests too far from land to carry anything heavier. He wondered if Manish had known that.

And why was he helping?

Manish had two ageing parents and a young daughter that they looked after during the long weeks he spent in the sky. If he left Dreamcatcher, there would be nobody left to support them. Rav wondered if he would leave if he was able to.

Come work for me.

He slid to the ground again. The captain had not come down off his giddy cloud since the dragonette had been captured, but it was only a matter of time before the question resurfaced.

No, it wasn't even a question. It was a demand.

Could he turn it down? Would he? He didn't want to live on an airship. He didn't want the captain's money. He didn't want a partner, much less a family. He didn't even want a house. He wanted to live in a vast conservatory, with plants and flowers and every shade of butterfly. With bugs that crawled away each time you turned a stone, and fish in ponds, and floating plants that sang with insects. With birds and trees. And dragons.

He wanted to study plants and fish and birds and bugs and dragons. Study and release them again. Or better yet, not catch them at all.

Bitter salt stung his eyes. His mind, still strung from the storm and the dragonette's capture, followed the creak in the hull as it returned for another pass. What haunted this ship? What brought it such bad luck that it ran into storms and squalls more than any other, lost its way under perfectly good navigation, and constantly frayed at the edges like it wanted to pull itself apart? What had the captain brought upon himself?

Come work for me.

Rav returned to his hammock and pulled his blankets up around him. No matter how hard he tried, the echo of the captain's voice still reached him through the walls of his cloth cocoon.

A bang on the door. Rav leaped awake and realized by extension that he had fallen asleep. Reality thudded back around him like the sharp chill of the air.

"Are you feeding the damned creature or aren't you?" snapped Indra through the door.

"I'm coming."

Rav dropped to the floor and yanked on his boots. Indra scowled at him as he opened the door, black hair rumpled and clothes creased. Rav didn't care.

"Nothing better to do, have you?" sneered Indra. "I hope you spared a moment of beauty rest to at least catch food for the thing."

"It's in the bathroom."

He had caught enough for several days the last time he went bug-hunting, and the dragonette had not eaten any yet. Rav had stored the tin of dead bugs in the coldest room on the ship so they would keep longer. He retrieved a handful while Indra fiddled with the lock on the captain's cabin. There was a ping. Indra cursed and rattled the handle, then flung the broken key-shaft on the ground. He was particularly irritable today.

"Stay where you are," he growled, and stalked away down the hall.

There was a faint click. Rav stared at the gap that had appeared around the rim of the door. It wobbled a little as a gust knocked the ship.

The door was open. If he just—

No. They would throw him off the ship.

Rav clutched the bugs tighter as his hand trembled. Maybe it was for the best if he just looked after the dragonette until they reached the biological station. Maybe he could tip off the scientists there, somehow, and they could confront the captain. What could he do without risking detection? If he got caught dropping notes, or sneaking around the captain's quarters, and the captain told Father...

Footsteps clumped back up the hallway. Indra spotted the cracked door first and turned a sharp eye to Rav.

"I didn't touch it," said Rav. "It opened on its own."

The captain grumbled as he inspected the jammed lock. He probed it with pliers, then handed them to Indra. The mechanic had no more success. The half-key inside was wedged firmly.

"Get it out after," said the captain, and strode away.

Indra let Rav in to feed the dragonette. The bugs he had last left lay untouched, and the water in the tin lid had not subsided. Indra took up his post in the doorway. Rav slipped a bit of chicken into the cage under the cover of a water change. He hoped for a response to the smell, at least, but aside from her breathing, the dragonette might as well have been carved from stone.

His two minutes wasted away. Rav returned the leftover bugs to their tin in the bathroom and emerged to find Indra feeding a wire through the crack in the cabin door. When the door closed, a latch clicked inside. Indra folded and pocketed the wire. He strode past Rav without a word.

Rav edged back into the bathroom as the creak in the hull approached. Like it had that morning, it paused beneath the captain's cabin. Rav darted into the hallway, ready to run to his room.

The click repeated behind him.

Rav caught himself on the railing and swung back into the bathroom doorway like a mouse into its burrow. Hinges whispered as the ship rocked. The cabin door, once again, was open a crack.

The creak was silent now. Rav watched that thin, black line around the door while his heart punched him repeatedly in the chest.

No. He would get kicked off the ship. And the captain would tell Father.

Slowly, deliberately, Rav pried his hands off the doorframe and walked away.