SIX - THE THROWING NETS-2

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    “Oh, God, Pan, were safe!” she sobbed, but then a thought rushed into her mind:

    it was the Costas boat shed hijac<bdo></bdo>ked that day. Suppose he remembered?

    “Better e along with us,” he said. “You alone?”

    “Yeah. I was running away....”

    “All right, dont talk now. Just keep quiet. Jaxer, move them bodies into the shadow. Kerim, look around.”

    Lyra stood up shakily, holding the wildcat Pantalaimon to her breast. He was twisting to look at something, and she followed his gaze, uanding and suddenly curious too: what had happeo the dead mens daemons? They were fading, that was the answer; fading and drifting away like atoms of smoke, for all that they tried to g to their men. Pantalaimon hid his eyes, and Lyra hurried blindly after Tony Costa.

    “What are you doing here?” she said.

    “Quiet, gal. Theres enough trouble awake without stirring more. Well talk on the boat.”

    He led her over a little wooden bridge into the heart of the al basin. The other two men were padding silently after them. Tony turned along the waterfront and out onto a woodey, from which he stepped on board a narrowboat and swung open the door to the .

    “Get in,” he said. “Quiow.”

    Lyra did so, patting her bag (which she had never let go of, even i) to make sure the alethiometer was still there. In the long narrow , by the light of a lantern on a hook, she saw a stout powerful woman with gray hair, sitting at a table with a paper. Lyra reized her as Billys mother.

    “Whos this?” the woman said. “Thats never Lyra?”

    “Thats right. Ma, we got to move. We killed two men out in the basihought they was Gobblers, but I re they were Turk traders. Theyd caught Lyra. Never mind talk—well do that on the move.”

    “e here, child,” said Ma Costa.

    Lyra obeyed, half happy, half apprehensive, for Ma Costa had hands like bludgeons, and now she was sure: it was their boat she had captured with Roger and the other collegers. But the boat mother set her hands oher side of Lyras face, and her daemon, a hawk, bely to lick Pantalaimons wildcat head. Then Ma Costa folded her great arms around Lyra and pressed her to her breast.

    “I<s></s> dunno what youre a doing here, but you look wore out. You  have Billys crib, soons Ive got a hot drink in you. Set you down there, child.”

    It looked as if her piracy was fiven, or at least fotten. Lyra slid onto the cushioned bench behind a well-scrubbed piable top as the low rumble of the gas engine shook the boat.

    “Where we going?” Lyra asked.

    Ma Costa was setting a sau of milk on the iron stove and riddling the grate to stir the fire up.

    “Away from here. No talking now. Well talk in the m.”

    And she said no more, handing Lyra a ilk when it was ready, swinging herself up on deck when the boat began to move, exging occasional whispers with the men. Lyra sipped the milk and lifted a er of the blind to watch the dark wharves move past. A minute or two later she was sound asleep.

    She awoke in a narrow bed, with that f engine rumble deep below. She sat up, banged her head, cursed, felt around, and got up more carefully. A thin gray light showed her three other bunks, each empty aly made, one below hers and the other two across the tiny . She swung over the side to find herself in her underclothes, and saw the dress and the wolfskin coat folded at the end of her bunk together with her shopping bag. The alethiometer was still there.

    She dressed quickly ahrough the door at the end to find herself in the  with the stove, where it was warm.

    There was no ohere. Through the windows she saw a gray swirl of fog on each side, with occasional dark shapes that might have been buildings or trees.

    Before she could go out on deck, the outer door opened and Ma Costa came down, swathed in an old tweed coat on which the damp had settled like a thousand tiny pearls.

    “Sleep well?” she said, reag for a frying pan. “Now sit down out the way and Ill make ye some breakfast. Dont stand about; there ent room.”

    “Where are we?” said Lyra.

    “On the Grand Jun al. You keep out of sight, child. I dont want to see you topside. Theres trouble.”

    She sliced a couple of rashers of ba into the frying pan, and cracked ao go with them.

    “What sort of trouble?”

    “Nothing we t cope with, if you stay out the way.”

    And she wouldnt say any more till Lyra had eaten. The boat slowed at one point, and something banged against the side, and she heard mens voices raised in anger; but then someones joke made them laugh, and the voices drew away and the boat moved on.

    Presently Tony Costa swung down into the . Like his mother, he earled ..h damp, and he shook his woollen hat over the stove to make the drops jump and spit.

    “What we going to tell her, Ma?”

    “Ask first, tell after.”

    He poured some coffee into a tin cup and sat down. He owerful, dark-faced man, and now that she could see him in daylight, Lyra saw a sad grimness in his expression.

    “Right,” he said. “Now you tell us what you was doing in London, Lyra. We had you down as being took by the Gobblers.”

    “I was living with this lady, right...”

    Lyra clumsily collected her story and shook it into order as if she were settling a pack of cards ready for dealing. She told them everything, except about the alethiometer.

    “And then last night at this cocktail party I found out what they were really doing. Mrs. Coulter was one of the Gobblers herself, and she was going to use me to help her catch more kids. And what they do is—”

    Ma Costa left the  a out to the cockpit. Tony waited till the door was shut, and cut in:

    “We know what they do. Least, we know part of it. We know they dont e back.

    Them kids is taken up north, far out the way, and they do experiments on em. At first we reed they tried out different diseases and medies, but thered be no reason to start that all of a sudden two or three years back. Thehought about the Tartars, maybe theres some secret deal theyre making up Siberia way; because the Tartars want to move north just as much as the rest, for the coal spirit and the fire mines, and theres been rumors of war for even lohan藏书网 the Gobblers been going. And we reed the Gobblers were buying off the Tartar chiefs by giving em kids, cause the Tartars eat em, dont they?

    They bake children a “em.”

    “They never!” said Lyra.

    “They do. Theres plenty of other things to be told, and all. You ever heard of the Nalkainens?”

    Lyra said, “No. Not even with Mrs. Coulter. What are they?”

    “Thats a kind of ghost they have up there in those forests. Same size as a child, and they got no heads. They feel their way about at night and if youre a sleeping out in the forest they get ahold of you and wont nothing make em let go. Nalkainens, thats a northern word. And the Windsuckers, theyre dangerous too. They drift about in the air. You e across clumps of em floated together sometimes, or caught snagged on a bramble. As soon as they touch you, all the strength goes out of you. You t see em except as a kind of shimmer in the air. And the Breathless Ones...”

    “Who are they?”

    “Warriors half-killed. Being alive is ohing, and being deads another, but being half-killed is worse thaher. They just t die, and living is altogether beyohey wander about forever. Theyre called the Breathless Ones because of whats been doo em.”

    “And whats that?” said Lyra, wide-eyed.

    “The North Tartars snap open their ribs and pull out their lungs. Theres an art to it. They do it without killing em, but their lungs t work anymore without their daemons pumping em by hand, so the result is theyre halfway betweeh and no breath, life ah, half-killed, you see. And their daemons got to pump and pump all day and night, or else perish with em. You e across a whole platoon of Breathless Ones in the forest sometimes, Ive heard. And then theres the panserbj0rne—you heard of them? That means armored bears. Theyre great white bears, and—”

    “Yes! I have heard of them! One of the men last night, he said that my uncle, Lord Asriel, hes being imprisoned in a fortress guarded by the armored bears.”

    “Is he, now? And what was he doing up there?”

    “Expl. But the way the man was talking I dont think my uncles on the same side as the Gobblers. I think they were glad he was in prison.”

    “Well, he wo out if the armored bears are guarding him. Theyre like meraries, you know what I mean by that? They sell their strength to whoever pays. They got hands like men, and they learhe trick of w iron way back, meteoriostly, and they make great sheets and plates of it to cover theirselves with. They been raiding the Skraelings for turies. Theyre vicious killers, absolutely pitiless. But they keep their word. If you make a bargain with a panserbj0m, you  rely on it.”

    Lyra sidered these horrors with awe.

    “Ma dont like to hear about the North,” Tony said after a few moments, “because of what mightve happeo Billy. We know they took him up north, see.”

    “How dyou know that?”

    “We caught one of the Gobblers, and made him talk. Thats how we know a little about what theyre doing. Them two last night werent Gobblers; they were too clumsy. If theyd been Gobblers wedve took em alive. See, the gyptian people, we been hit worse than most by these Gobblers, and were a ing together to decide what to do about it. Thats what we was doing in the basin last night, taking on stores, cause were going to a big muster up in the fens, what we call a roping. And what I re is <q>?99ｌｉb.</q>were a going to send out a rescue party, when we heard what all the yptians know, whe our knowledge together. Thats what Id do, if I was John Faa.”

    “Whos John Faa?”

    “The king of the gyptians.”

    “And youre really going to rescue the kids? What aber?”

    “Wher?”

    “The Jordan College kit boy. He was took same as Billy the day before I e away with Mrs. Coulter. I bet if I was took, hed e and rescue me. If yoing to rescue Billy, I want to e too and rescue Roger.”

    And Uncle Asriel, she thought; but she didion that.

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