Father drilled the clean bones, and the two of them together began sewing them to the coat, ranks from hem to collar, stripes twisting around the sleeves, the black-stained bones dark against the bright red linen.
No one said anything to Navid. They pretended to be cheerful. Mother and Dorre praised him and cosseted him when he came home tired. Father warned him not to push too hard, to be careful of the cold and currents. No one had to say anything. He knew he was failing the family. Fourteen days gone and he had only brought back eighty hands. Still more than two thousand bones to go. He would never find enough in time now, diving like he had been since the first day/etc. His friends couldn’t help him. No one kept stockpiles in the spring, and the other divers had their own families or masters to support. The ones who dove for free and haggled with tailors to sell their bones each time couldn’t afford to take credit, and all his family’s money was already gone for thread and buttons and clasps fit for a noble easterner and to the alchemists to fill Father’s boiling kettle.
Navid had to do better, or it was all dust in the gutter and they’d be begging for credit all year just to keep afloat.
Tandis had no bones to spare, but she had been happy to pay her tossing debt to Navid with a bottle of ghost liquor instead of coppers. Father refused to make it, and he’d never give it to Navid even if he did. Tandis knew Navid needed the help, but even she wouldn’t risk diving with him. No one would while he was having such bad luck. It would rub off on them, and they’d have to pay the fire keepers for a cleansing before they could work again.
Navid swirled the liquor in its bottle, dark as the river, dirty as winter rain. He pulled out the cork. It smelled like charcoal and vinegar and hot dust. The river rolled dark and moody below. The sun was hot on his back, but he felt cold. He’d only ever tried ghost liquor once, on a dare, and he’d never dived with it. No choice now. He had to do more, and he was already aching from yesterday’s work. He couldn’t get there just by pushing.
He took a drink, bitter and sharp. It burned going down, settled like ice in his chest. He set the bottle next to his clothes, closed his eyes, and dove. The weight of the ghost liquor pulled him down fast. He kept his eyes shut, but he saw. Little puffs of white mist floated up from the riverbed, wisps of fraying spirit lost into the flow. There were ropes and trunks of water outlined by cold white sparks, currents stirred up by angry ghosts. He lost track of the river watching the lighted currents, so much that he forgot himself and blundered into a dark one. The river didn’t need any help from spirits to grab him and tumble him end over end in a vein of cold water.
He kicked out and finished dropping to the bottom. There were wisps of ghostlight puffing from the mud, but when his fingers brushed them they snuffed out and he found nothing but black silt. He chased the firefly sparks until his chest was burning for a breath. He kicked up wild for the surface. He’d stayed too long. He broke into the light and gasped and floated for ten breaths before he started kicking for the bank.
The sun was hot, but the light stained sallow after the white under the water. He dove again and arrowed for the bottom. He chased the brightest flake of ghostlight he could see into an eddy up against the north bank, but there was only the dust of bones worn down to nothing by the current. He punched his fist in to the useless bottom and kicked up to breathe again.
He chased shadows and flashes through the morning, until he had to rest on the stones under the sun with nothing to show for it. He had to do more, to see better. He had to find the bones.
He took another drink of the ghost liquor, a deep swallow this time. It filled up his stomach with icy weight and his mouth with the taste of ashes. He dove again, and the light was everywhere. The Winter Serpent bloomed with shadows from the ghostlight lamps dancing in every fleck of foam. He saw a lantern shining far below. That had to be a hand for him. He fell toward it.
The river fought like a snake that could smell the sweetness in his blood. It wrapped thick coils hawser-tight around him and tried to throw him down the current. He twisted, slipped through and beat up into light bright as the sun over his head. He had it. Three fingertips above the silt, the hand still whole and safe below. He grabbed it, and saw his companions in the black at last.
The water was full of ghosts. They drifted white and hollow, with sharp shadows where their hands should be. He couldn’t look at those un-spaces. It felt like a bruise growing behind his eyes when he tried to. He didn’t need shadows. He needed another lamp. Where was the other hand? They liked to stay in pairs.
He pulled himself along the bed toward the next bright light. He felt the spirit following, one hand a shadow, the other absence shining in his bag. They both sifted the bottom, looking for the twin. Navid’s chest burned, but he could get it. He could bring it up before he lost the thread. He could breathe any time. He only had to let go and fall back down into the air.
He found it, just ahead of the spirit. It stared white and blind at the hand going into his bag. The ghost reached for it straight through him and found his heart. Cold fingers twisted wire-tight. Beat. Beat. Black covering the ghostlight now. He kicked up off the mud. One kick. Two. It lost its grip. He tried to breathe.
Navid shivered and shook. Hands were pulling at him, trying to hold him still. He tried to shake them off.
His eyes opened to brightness. He was in bed, in his mother’s house, warmed by the sunlight and the chimney behind him. He had tangled sweat-soaked sheets around himself. He threw them off. The sun felt good, and he rolled to press his back against the warm stone of the chimney. His bones didn’t ache, but there was still a cold feeling under his hot skin. He opened his eyes again and blinked them clear. His father was there, standing next to the window, stooped a little with the slant of the ceiling. He was chanting, so low Navid had to strain to hear it. The verse of Vigilant Attendance finished; he changed to the verse of Joyful Rising with the Dawn and smiled down at Navid.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Two days.”
Two days after that blackness. How had he even made it to the surface, if he was that weak? The bones!
“The hands. I found two.”
His father held up a hand to slow him.
“Don’t worry. Your friends brought them along with you. The bones are boiled and sewn to the coat already.”
Father smiled again. Why was he smiling? They only had thirteen days left, and Navid hadn’t brought back what they needed. Father should be finding another diver, should be working, doing something, not smiling at Navid while the family was disgraced for failing to deliver on their promises.
Navid tried to stand up, but he couldn’t even sit. His arms buckled under him when he pressed. Father frowned.
“You rest. Now that you’re awake to drink it, I will bring you tea, and then broth, and you can build your strength back. You were wandering in ghost-dreams and fever. It will take time to pin your soul back into your heart again.” His voice was husky from all the chanting he had done the last weeks.
Father went out, reciting under his breath again. Navid lay on his pallet. He couldn’t do anything else yet. He should be diving.
He lay in bed and drank tea and broth while Father recited verses of protection and healing over him. By sunset, he had graduated to stew filled with pepper and fish and river clams and regained enough strength to walk as far as the chamber pot.
The next day Tandis and Sepehr and Mehri all visited. Sepehr had done a little diving for Father, but he’d had worse luck than Navid. Mehri said Dorre was walking the city and trying to get bones from other coat makers, but no one had enough, and they wouldn’t sell to her on credit.
Of course they wouldn’t. Navid had known they had to find the bones themselves before his stupid failure with the ghost liquor, and nothing was different now except for wasted time. That was enough. He’d had a chance to save them, to make this a triumph instead of a disgrace, and he’d ruined it. There was no way they could finish the coat before Su Linzhe
left the city now.
He was four days in bed, with Father mumbling and singing over him the whole time instead of working. All Navid could think about was the coat and the bones they needed. His mind drifted away from the sun back to the darkness of the Winter Serpent. He tried to remember it as only darkness and forget the ghostlight that had tricked him.
With nine days left until the coat was due, he got up and defied Father shooing him back to bed. He helped Dorre clean after the morning meal, and she said nothing when he slipped out the kitchen door to go to the river. She understood how important it was. It would be her buying into a merchant house if they got the silver.
His strength was back. Whether it was Father’s verses or Mother’s broth or just rest in a warm bed, the chill and the weight was out of his bones again, and he dove easily. He knew the river again, and it played with him instead of fighting. The ghostlight was only a bad dream, and he felt no icy fingers. He stayed at the river until two hours before sunset and found three hands. He was back at his best, but it was still impossible. The bones were buried too deep, and the spring currents were too strong for digging in the silt.
When he went home, he spilled the hands out on the table. They crouched like thick-legged spiders, staring up at him. The whole house heard the clatter. Father was first to meet him.
“Where have you been, Navid?” he asked sternly.
“Where do you think? I was diving, to make sure I could, and to see if I could do better this time.” Mother and Dorre had followed Father into the kitchen. “I can’t. I can’t get enough bones in time, not any way I know how. We have to do something about it.”
“Perhaps we can negotiate with Su Linzhe,” said Dorre. “We could tell him what happened to Navid. He won’t want a death-debt on him for a coat.”
Navid felt himself flush. Using his weakness to get concessions from Su Linzhe would shame him, but if it was what they needed. He kept quiet.
Mother shook her head. “No. He won’t care what happened to Navid. He’s so far above us he won’t fear a debt or a ghost following him home. If we come to him, he might just demand the coat half-finished and pay us nothing. The magistrate won’t issue a judgment if he does, not with him carrying a seal from the king-of-kings.”
“It’s done then,” said Father. “We can’t finish the coat in nine days, so we won’t. We’ll say nothing to the foreigner if he comes looking, and he’ll leave. He won’t lower himself to a petty dispute with merchants. That would admit to caring about money and trade. When we’ve finished the coat, someone will buy it. A thirty-eight-hundred bone coat will be a wonder, even in Charces.”
Mother frowned, but she nodded. Easier to think Su Linzhe would just go away than that gold-armored soldiers would smash in their door to take the coat. Navid could imagine that easily enough. Who would stand up for their family against a high noble? What were they thinking? They might keep the coat and sell it, and maybe it would be a wonder for the king-of-kings’ court, but they would never get enough to pay for all the materials, all the time and lost reputation. Father had been the one terrified of what failing would cost when they began. Why was he ignoring it now?
Father recited the verse of Dutiful Acceptance going out, and Mother hummed under him. They wouldn’t take any argument from the children. They were afraid. They thought Navid couldn’t handle the weight of his failure, so they pretended it didn’t really matter.
He would show them both. He was strong enough to save them.
Navid went into his father’s workshop and stole the fire-carrier, the little bronze pot Father used to bring back coals from the temple to relight his altar on festival days. It was stamped with verses from the Prophet’s book, the letters twisted to look like the towers and pyramids of a great palace. The handle was black from years of use. Navid took it, and a bar of wax for sealing, and went out into the black night, for the last chance to redeem his failure. There was only a little moon, but Navid was a bone diver, used to being sure without seeing. He walked quickly through the blind night streets.
What he needed was a flood. It would strengthen the currents, but it would churn the silt and bring a new crop of hands to the surface for him. The weeks after a flood were always the richest for the bone divers, even if they had to dive careful and short to stand the currents and the cold. He could bring up all the bones they needed in three days of flood diving, if he kept his courage.
The only trouble was the season. There would be no storms in the mountains or floodwaters down the Winter Serpent until the autumn. The Prophet’s flame held the cold rains back in summer so the fields could be worked and people could travel the mountains without fearing wind and mudslides. The temple was built out over the Winter Serpent to restrain the wildness of the water with the order and charity of the flame. Only a grave offense would make the flame withdraw its protection.
Navid had already committed one blasphemy by taking Father’s fire-carrier without permission or ceremony. It would take three to call the storm he needed, and maybe the flame would consume him for them when he came to judgment, but that would be after his mother had years weaving for nothing but the joy if her skill and the beauty of her work, after his father had years to study the Prophet’s book and the commentaries in the temple, after Dorre was established in a trading house with a family of her own. He only had one talent he could support the family with, and the river had to cooperate.
He committed his second blasphemy leaning out over the river bank. For a moment, the handle of the fire-carrier burned in his hand. He bit down on a scream and plunged it into the river. There was no steam, and when he pulled the fire carrier back, full of cold, dark water, his hand was not marked or tender. The burn had only been a fancy. He sealed the lid of the fire-carrier tight, warming the wax in his hands and pressing it all around the rim in a thick coat. Once it was set, the water would keep it stiff. He tied it where his bone-bag should sit.
The fire keeper temple was always open, with priests as ready to tend the faithful as the flame, even at night. The sun’s servants didn’t need to sleep. They would stop him if he came in with a sealed vessel wet from the river, but he still had one more blasphemy to do.
He had filled the fire-carrier upstream from the temple bridge. He slipped into the water quietly and floated on the surface, letting the current carry him. There was no sound but the rushing of the river against banks and bridge footings, no light until the glow of fire spilling from the temple windows gilded the water. No one looked out of those windows, but he still felt a sudden fear of discovery. Maybe the eyes of the Prophet himself would look out of the altar flame and see what Navid was planning.
He drifted under the bridge and lifted his hand up to catch it. There was only a handspan between the water and the worn stone. The walls of the temple went straight up from the bridge, curving back into the dome. Light spilled out from a hundred windows carved in the shapes of sun-welcoming flowers and morning birds and twisting flames, but here at the waterline, everything was in shadow.
Navid felt for a handhold to pull himself out of the water. The bricks were old as dust, with every edge worn round and smooth. He found a gap of crumbling mortar and levered himself up enough to brace his feet on the bridge. He kept his thoughts tight on his goal and his eyes looking up. He walled the river and the darkness he was carrying out of his mind, walled away what Father would shout if he knew what Navid was doing.
He didn’t have to climb too far. There were small altars around the outside of the temple, and they were just as holy as the huge one in the center; it was all the Prophet’s flame. He kept his hands as clear of the windows as he could and felt carefully for each foothold among the carvings and cracked bricks until he was a little up the curve of the dome. A few steps farther and it would be bent enough for him to stand, but this was far enough.
The nearest window was shaped like a round sun disk. He settled his toes firmly on a carved ridge under it and leaned in. He pulled the fire-carrier int
o his hands. There was an altar, almost straight down. He cracked the lid off and thrust the vessel out, turning it over at the same time.
The water fell in a glittering arc, catching the flicker of every flame. The lid clanged like a gong on the stone floor. The water landed and flashed to steam with a scream of outrage from the fire, shrill as a hunting bird. Heat washed up with it, and he felt it hot as shame on his face. His hands burned again and he dropped the fire-carrier. Heads turned to look, and Navid leapt back. He took one half-step down the steep wall and kicked off, clear and diving. He hit the water and went deep before he heard a shout of outrage from the priests.
When he surfaced on the far side of the bridge, the light from the temple’s windows was red, and it pulsed as steady as a heartbeat. He heard the priests inside, singing verses and hymns to beg forgiveness. Let it not be enough.
The storm woke him and the whole city with thunderclaps loud as the mountain shattering. They never saw the sun that day. Rain lashed down in silver curtains, and winds made tiny whitecaps in the streets. Good people stayed inside and prayed at their altars for the storm to calm.
Whenever it was slack, Navid looked out his window, east to the mountains, and clutched a coal of hope tighter. The nearest peaks were all hidden in black cloud and a worse storm than was falling on the city. The river would be rising. The flood would come. Fallen trees from the high forest would trail their roots along the mud and churn it. The currents would buck and shift and trouble the silt as they found a new balance.
Navid stayed in his room most of the day, keeping the hope pressed down in his chest. The rain broke everyone else’s resignation. Mother and Dorre scolded him for smiling when he was careless at the morning meal. They were finally upset about the failure of the thirty-eight-hundred bone coat, and they took it out on him. Father stayed in his workshop all day, singing to his altar flame.
R K Duncan - [BCS277 S02] - The Thirty-Eight-Hundred Bone Coat (html) Page 2