Bloodline Rising

by Katy Moran

  Tasik lies on his back, arms and legs spread awkwardly, bright hair clotted with blood. His eyes are open, staring sightlessly up at the tangle of green leaves above. Blood still seeps from the tear in his pale, freckled throat. It is like a big grin, a mockery of a smile. Oh, my father. I am too late. I kneel by his side, closing my fingers around the cold, yielding flesh of his arm, crying, “Tasik, Tasik,” even though I know he will not wake, because he is dead and I delivered him to this end.

  “For the love of God, shut your mouth!” It is the boy who sits by me on the oar bench – I can just make out his narrow, bony face in the gloom of the hold. He is shaking my arm, gripping it so hard I flinch. The stench hits me like a wall as I wake. There is no way to get relief when you are chained to the oar and the deck swills with piss and ordure. Every now and then one of the overseers comes with a bucket of seawater and the filthy mass of it swills around our ankles and spills down into the bilge. On the rowing deck there are tiny oar-shaft holes, which let in thin, salty air. Down here there is nothing but the smell of our own bodies and waste, and of stale breath. I am sure misery has its own scent, too: it has the sweetish hint of decay, the smell of all hope dying.

  “Leave the poor child be, Amin!” I hear a woman call from somewhere in the darkness.

  “All we get down here is sleep,” Amin says roughly. “Is that to be taken from us as well?”

  “Get used to it, my friend,” calls another voice. “You don’t even own your dreams now.”

  Amin ignores them. “Just be quiet,” he says to me savagely. “We need all the rest we can get in this hell-pit.”

  “I do not choose my dreams,” I answer, shivering. I can still see Tasik lying there, the awful ragged tear in his throat. He is dead, I am sure Tasik must be dead, and the fault’s mine, for I did not reach him in time. And what became of Elflight, of Ma? Asha?

  I wish Thales had killed me, but it is worse than that: he sold me.

  Amin raises a thin black eyebrow. “Oh, so you speak a civilized tongue after all?” – I must have been calling out in Anglish or in British as I slept – “Well, little barbarian, you will be glad to know where these sons of demons are trading us. Maybe your mama shall buy you back in the northlands, if they don’t sell you first in Ephesus or Syracuse.”

  I do not have the spirit to tell him I have never been further north than my father’s estate at Heiron. “Where do they trade to, then?” I ask. “The Gaulish lands?” My voice is cracked. I have barely spoken to anyone since I was in the Great Palace with Constans. I have become like an animal on board this hellish boat, knowing only hunger, pain and what little relief we get. I know not how long I have been here: it might be six days, or it might be twenty. I never see the rising sun. I never see the night, only darkness.

  Amin laughs. He has square, white teeth and a crooked nose that looks as though it has been broken more than once. “Further than that, my friend. Bright-haired angel-brats like you fetch a fine price, and they are going to get some more. This boat goes all the way to the end of the earth – Britannia.”

  Where did you and Tasik come from, Mama? I asked long ago.

  Mama looked up from her spinning, the coil of red yarn limp in her hands. Britain, my honey, she said. The island of Britain.

  Why did you come here, then?

  Frowning, Mama became very busy with her spindle, retying the weight. Cai, the past is best left where it is – behind. She smiled. Do you find Maria and ask her when the broth shall be ready. I wager you’re as hungry as me.

  And now God or the devil or whoever rules my fate has chosen to send me to Britain, island of my forefathers, island of secrets.

  For the first time since I lost my life, I smile.

  On the oar deck there’s scarce room to stand. Even the overseers must walk hunched like olive trees twisted by the wind – little wonder they are so free and easy with the lash. This boat must be one of those old-style dromons with two decks of slaves at oar and a couple of masts. Many’s the time I’ve seen them sliding up along the Golden Horn and then hauling sail where the wind picks up on the strait down towards Chalcedon. I never thought I should be on one of them, rowing. I can see one of the masts – it passes up through the wooden-planked roof to the deck above, climbing up towards the open sky. How I long to see the sky.

  I am racked with pain: I have been hit so many times by the oars before and behind that my flesh roils with bruises. The overseer always has a whip, and the skin on my back and shoulders is raw and stuck to my tunic with dried blood. My hands are burning, blistered, but I cannot leave go of the oar. I am so tired, afire with the heat of rowing. I feel my eyes closing; my head droops forwards.

  “Row, you fool,” hisses Amin over his shoulder. “Row, else we’ll all suffer.” He looks a few years younger than Tasik – more of a boy, really, and although he’s skinny, his arms and shoulders are thick with coils of muscle.

  I clench my fingers around the oar-handle and try to heave in time with everyone else. I cannot make myself do it; the shaft flies from my hands, and shouts of rage boil up from the oar benches. My hands scrabble uselessly, there’s a choking blow to my belly as the shaft flies back and I cannot breathe – I am knocked backwards off the bench and the shackles rend the skin from my ankles as I fall. Rough hands grab my tunic and I’m hauled upright. Someone is shouting at me; fiery lines of pain wriggle across my back and shoulders. The lash comes down again and I feel thick, warm liquid seep beneath my clothes.

  “Ya Allah,” Amin says. “Follow the way I do it: watch.”

  And now, even though every fibre in my body is swollen with pain, at least I heave in time with everyone else and do not get smashed in my belly by the oar-shaft.

  We have got out of rhythm only one other time this shift, and then it was not my fault: an old man died a few moments ago – just three rows ahead of me. I watched him slump over his oar, and then a great shout went up. The overseer, the one with the gingery beard and the belly that looks like a deflated pig’s bladder, he came and tore about the old man with his whip, and the shouting grew louder till I thought the air would burst with it.

  “Leave off it!” Amin yelled. “Can’t you see he’s finished? Or must we be scourged all the way to hell as well as every day of our lives?”

  The fat overseer did not trouble to reply, just laid about Amin’s back with his whip. Amin made no sound, though, just set his teeth hard together and carried on heaving the oar as though the lash were nothing more than a fly. I wish I had the courage to bear it so.

  And I wish Thales the Knife had cut my throat, that night. Hell can be no worse than this, and I know I haven’t a hope of the other place.

  Tecca

  I DO NOT know if I am awake or if I sleep. Cold fingers brush my forehead.

  Then I hear it: laughter. My little sister always had a spluttering, snorty, unladylike laugh. You will have to change your ways when you are old enough to go into society, you ragged kit, Ma used to say, or they will throw you out of court.

  I don’t care for court anyhow, Tecca would tell her. It’s naught but a bunch of cheese-faced old women, and I would rather die than paint my face and sit on my behind waiting to be married.

  It is a long time since I heard Tecca laugh, but I’d know the sound of it anywhere. I am at home again.

  “Where are you?” I say to the silent courtyard. “Come out, Tecca, this isn’t a game.”

  The laugh again. Does it come from behind the fountain? But there is no one there, and I see now why all seems so wrong. The fountain casts no shadow and neither do I. The courtyard is filled with nothing but blank light. More laughter.

  “Tecca! Where are you hiding?”

  And then she is standing before me, her fire-coloured curls tangled with mud, dark eyes alive with mischief. She is wearing her favourite blue tunic, the one with crimson stripes around the cuffs. It is earth-damp, though, and clinging wetly to her pale limbs.

  I step towards her. “You little fool
,” I say, “You’re all begrimed. Ma will be in a rage with you.”

  She smiles, slipping just out of my reach, and her round white teeth are blackened with earth as well. “Silly,” she says in a strange, whispering voice. “It’s dirty in the ground. How can I help it?”

  “You’re not going back there,” I say, reaching for her.

  But Tecca just looks at my outstretched hands and laughs. “Even you cannot bring me home, Cai,” she whispers, and as she smiles, a clod of earth falls from her lips.

  The dream shifts.

  “Cai, wake up.” It is her again. If I open my eyes, I will be in my bed at home, Tecca sitting at my feet. Oftentimes she comes to me in the early morning, before anyone else is awake. She likes to tell stories about what she will do when she is grown: I shall be like Tasik, she always says. I shall ride around the desert with the Arabs and have battles. I shall live with the wild tribes in my own tent and sleep outside at night, and ride along the trade-paths all the way east till I see the sun rising at the end of the world. She will push her chilly feet beneath my sheets, pressing them against my legs till I get out of bed and go down to the cook-room with her, where we dip our fingers in the ginger preserve and tear strips of chicken off the carcass one of the slaves has left out…

  I know this is nothing but a dream, a memory, yet still I hear Tecca whispering my name. I must see. It is hard to know what is a dream and what is not – perhaps this ship is but a nightmare and if I open my eyes I will be at home, and Tecca will not be dead, and I will not be a killer.

  But it is not so, of course it is not. I’m awake now. The darkness of the hold closes around me and I feel the familiar squeeze of panic. How will I bear this for the rest of my life? My belly aches with hunger. It is strange, I did not think it would be possible to feel hungry this long, but the cramping, sick longing for food never goes away. It just gets worse. For a moment, I think I just see the gleam of Tecca’s bright hair in the gloom of a far corner, but I know she is not here, not really. Only now I am sure I feel her chilly fingers in my hair, against my face.

  Her voice is like the whispering of wind in the trees – a sound I do not think I shall live to hear again.

  Never forget you are bound by gold, Tecca says softly, and then I cannot feel her touch any more. You are a child of the Serpent, and you must go home.

  Is she here or not? Is my sister living somehow, or dead? “Tecca!” I whisper. “Where are you?”

  But in reply I hear just a silvery trace of her voice, an echo. You are a child of the Serpent.

  I sit up, my heart thundering. I am dreaming again and that is all. The Serpent? What does that mean? But I am bound by gold, this is true enough. I reach beneath the rags of my tunic, and my fingers close around the leather thong and then the ring itself. Its smooth coldness brings a strange calm. How can they not have taken it from me? They must have searched me for booty when I was first captured, but they missed this. And how could I have not cared to notice before whether it was there or not?

  I still have my father’s gold: I have Tasik’s ring.

  One day I shall take my revenge for his life, and for Ma’s, and Elflight’s, and Asha’s, too. But before that I am going north – for what can I do now? I’m just a child. For the first time since I left Constans in the Great Palace, I am making a choice: I will not be getting off this God-forsaken ship at Ephesus or any other port till we have crossed the northern seas and landed upriver on the island of Britannia, the home Mama and Tasik left behind so long ago. I shall learn there how to kill – and I pray the devil does not take Achaicus Dassalena before I return to my city.

  We laid off rowing just now, and one of the overseers I’d not seen before’s walking up and down the oar benches, pointing with the end of his whip at anyone hale. Everyone looks half dead to me – but some, like Amin, are wreathed with muscle from the rowing while others are weak and thin, their knobbly spines and delicate, wing-like shoulder blades pushing through their ragged clothes.

  There’s a lot of shouting, and I can hear a great rattling of chain, so they must be dropping anchor. Some of us will be going ashore, and some shall not.

  The overseer points his whip at Amin – but pauses when he looks at me.

  “Will we not take that one?” Ginger-beard jerks his head in my direction, as though I were a sack of beans or a bolt of cloth – something anyone might find in the market.

  The chief overseer stands back a pace and looks at me from beneath lowered eyelids. He is a thin-faced man with dark hair that falls down over his forehead, even though most of it’s scraped into a tail at the back of his head. “No good: nothing but bones.” He turns away.

  He is doubtless right – I have no way of seeing what my face looks like, but my arms are scrawny and my legs look like sticks.

  Then the overseer pauses and turns back, snatching a handful of my hair. “Fair, though,” he says to Ginger-beard. “Could get more coin for that, though his hide’s dark.”

  No, I plead silently.

  Amin is going. Although we have barely spoken, it feels as if I am losing a dear friend. He stares straight down at the oar, looking at his hands, flexing his long fingers. But I cannot go with him to be sold at the slave market in Ephesus. I am staying on this boat all the way north.

  The overseer snatches at my arm – my whole body aches these days and it hurts so much when he touches me that I have to squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth. “No meat on there,” he says sharply. “Useless.” He turns to Ginger-beard. “They’re no good to us if they’re too weak to work, and we’re losing too many. We’ll have to keep this one and feed it up till Carthage at least if we’re to get decent coin. I want it off this boat by the time we trade at Athens. You know as well as I the fair ones fetch less the further north you go.”

  Thanks be to God – we are to get more food. I feel my eyes grow hot, and for a moment I think I am going to cry with gratitude. I watch the overseer walk away, jabbing the butt of his whip at a few more people, and then I know I shall not shed one tear. He is not kind. He is a trader, a merchant, and all he wants to do is make sure he sells human flesh for the highest price he can get.

  But he will not sell me.

  Someone barks out an order and we are all unchained from the oar benches. It seems to take a lifetime as the overseers fumble with the keys. Some of the locks stick, and pig-grease is sent for to loosen them. The chosen ones get to their feet and shamble off towards the companionway; the rest of us are to go down into the hold till the shore crew returns to the boat. Amin rests his hand on my shoulder as he passes, saying, “May Allah protect you, little one,” and he is the only one who walks with pride, his head held high, his back straight.

  I watch them go, blinking as my sight blurs once more. I am so tired I can barely see. I think I hear her again… I must be losing my senses, for Tecca has been dead over a year, and I shall never have talk with her again. Yet I am sure this faint whispering voice is hers.

  Are you the Ghost or no? No one binds the Ghost.

  It makes no sense: when Tecca was still alive, I was not even the Ghost – I was but Cai, son of God’s Fire. I hear the ringing music of her laugh – just behind me, it seems – but when I turn my head I see only the miserable, hollow faces of those left on board: Africans, Slavs, people far, far from their own lands.

  Ginger-beard is bellowing again, and slowly everyone starts unfolding their ruined bodies from the oar benches, stepping out of the unlocked shackles. “Get down below!” roars Ginger-beard, and his whip flickers about, stinging my flesh like a fly over a midden-pit in high summer. I would like to take that whip and ram the butt of it right into his gullet till he chokes.

  I am not going back down into the hold. This is my chance: they are not expecting anyone to run. After all, where is there to go but the wide open sea? You can be sure we are anchored too far out from Ephesus harbour to make swimming a chance. I hear the creaking of ropes, splashing and shouting. They must have a skiff
somewhere; tethered to the upper deck, or maybe they tow it behind, even though it must slow us. Amin and the rest will be put in that – all chained, if the slavers have any sense – and rowed for once, instead of taking the oars themselves. I wonder if it would almost be worth being sold just to see one of these overseers strain at the oar instead of us.

  No, there is nowhere on this ship that any mortal might escape to – but they have not reckoned on the Ghost. The African man who sat next to Amin is passing me now; he speaks in a tongue I cannot understand and rests his hand on my head. He looks at me as if I am running crazy. He speaks again, gesturing at Ginger-beard who is elbowing his way through the throng towards me, his face all sweaty and red with anger because I have not moved from the bench.

  I am not here. None of you can see me, for I am the Ghost. I do not know where I get the strength, but I dart to my feet and run to the bow, where the benches get shorter and shorter as the dromon narrows towards her prow. I want to laugh – the African’s face twisted with surprise as I left, his eyes widening. I duck below the nearest bench, flattening myself against the filth-mired floor. When they sluice down our deck the water must not reach this far forward, because I swear I am lying in all manner of human mess. It surprises me that I do not even care. Had this happened at home, I would have been reeling with disgust. I hear the African laughing – Ginger-beard must be stamping around like a small child who has lost a saffron cake; but I am nowhere to be found, or at least I hope to God I am not. It’s the first time I remember anyone laughing in a long while.

  Ginger-beard shall either find me, or he will think the chief has changed his mind and taken me ashore. I curl up into as small a space as I can manage, bunching my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I was ever rangy, like a yearling colt, Tasik used to say, but now my legs feel weightless, the flesh melted away.

  I close my eyes. I must think of nothing but my breathing, and the beating of my heart. I must try not to be in the world. If I am caught, they will most likely kill me. Or if not that, I shall be chained in the hold for the rest of the voyage till they haul me off this barque and sell me in some dusty market-place.